The Carlyle: where the costs of the high life are particularly high.

For a lot of people, $455,352 is the kind of money that buys a nice house in the suburbs or a one-bedroom apartment in New York. But for some, it's just the cost of annual maintenance fees on an apartment at one of the city's hotel co-ops.

Paramount Pictures chairman Brad Grey drops a half-a-million dollars a year for the maintenance fees on his 3,000-square foot apartment at the Carlyle, The New York Times reports, which charges the city's highest monthly maintenance fees of $10.23 per square foot. And he had to shell out $15 million to buy the apartment in the first place.

But is it really worth paying $37,946 a month to have twice-a-day housekeeping and people to bring you a cup of coffee or press your shirts at constant beck and call? (Cable TV, window washings and bath amenities are also included).

“You are really looking at buyers who, in order to maintain a staff in any residence that could deliver all of the things that are deliverable at the Carlyle, would have to look at spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on that staff,” Brown Harris Stevens broker Kathy Sloane told The Times.

Really?

Fortunately, the hotel lifestyle can be had for less at the Sherry-Netherland, which only charges $6.03 a square foot, or the Pierre—basically a huge bargain at $3.37. Or the wealthy can always move into a normal co-op for an average of $1.70 a square foot, hire a full-time housekeeper and make their own coffee (e gads!).

The Times notes that the maintenance fees don't cover dog walking or lush flower arrangements or any of the other luxuries you might imagine would be a part of life at the Carlyle. Not that the hotel can't arrange to have your dogs walked or your tables graced with rare blooms—but it will cost you extra. Although residents do get discounts on spa services and the parking garage. Which should come as a real relief to someone who's shelling out tens of thousands of dollars a month to have staff members at every corner.

But there's twice a day housekeeping! gushes one broker. Twice A Day.

Not mentioned: are tips included? How about pillow mints?

kvelsey@observer.com

Brad and Cassandra Grey

Sitting on the board of N.Y.U.'s Stern Business School, hedge funder Peter Schoenfeld knows a thing or two about economics: buy low, sell high.

Back in 2007, Mr. Schoenfeld and his wife  Charlotte bought the the entire 26th floor of the storied Carlyle Hotel for $6.4 million from Allbritton Communications, the publisher of Politico. It was the height of the real estate boom, so you would think Mr. Schoendfeld had overpaid. Not so! According to city records, he has just flipped the property to none other than Hollywood power broker Brad Grey.Mr. Schoenfeld did not do quite as well as he had hoped, however, selling the 3,000-square-foot spread for $15.5 million, less than the $17.5 million he originally hoped to get when he put the place on the market in July. The deal was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter last Friday, but the deal just came through city records today.

Mr. Schoenfeld is a respected opportunistic investor who The Financial Times recently called "the deal junkie," who has called the city home for years. For Mr. Grey, the head of Paramount Picture, this is a bit of a homecoming for the Bronx-born former agent and television producer (credits include The Garry Shandling Show, The Sopranos, NewsRadio and Just Shoot Me!).

According to a listing from Brown Harris Stevens agent Kathy Sloane, Mr. Grey and his wife Cassandra will be master and mistress of the Universe in their new place, enjoying mood-setting city vistas."With magnificent views west over Central Park, romantic sunsets and brilliant sun rises are a part of life at the top of Manhattan." The sprawl includes a 323-square-foot master suite, an in-home office and a giant entertaining-friendly gallery.

Mr. Grey has been busy with real estate dealings recently, The Hollywood Reporter notes. He put a seven-bedroom Los Angeles estate, once owned by Frank Sinatra, on the market for $23.5 million in September, which he purchased only last year for $17.5 million. Taking a page from Mr. Schoenfeld's book, it appears..

eknutsen@observer.com

Perhaps that's why Cuban-born, Florida-based businessman (and one-time Clinton pal) Paul Cejas, who recently sold his fifth-floor abode at peerless 834 Fifth Avenue to Swiss bank-note-printing tycoon Maurice Amon, is joining the ranks at the luxe 77th Street hotel. He purchased an 11th-floor co-op for $5.6 million, say city records and sources close to the deal. (Hillary Clinton stayed regularly at Mr. Cejas' 834 Fifth place when she was preparing for her 2000 Senate run.)

Purchased from Rosaline Brinton, the three-bedroom apartment, replete with private elevator landing, marble entrance gallery, wet bar and a sunken living room with 13-foot-high, vaulted ceilings, was listed by Douglas Elliman superbroker Dolly Lenz.

Well, maybe not exactly the same. I mean, this supersonic talent began her career at age 6, playing Ethel Waters’ niece on the Beulah show; began at age 9 belting out 29 shows a week at the famed Apollo Theater, and continued doing so for eight years, playing to audiences that could not believe their ears; and became a household name as a 15-year-old contestant on Name That Tune. She hasn’t forgotten a thing. In fact, she’s singing stronger than ever. So Uptown Downtown is a perfect title for her first appearance on a New York nightclub stage in almost 20 years. She began uptown; worked her way down to Greenwich Village by the time she was old enough to cut off her pigtails; and ended up in the middle, winning a Tony award for her Broadway debut in Hallelujah, Baby! with a marvelous score by Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green. (She also played Cleopatra in an ill-fated musical flop called Her First Roman, but she makes no mention of that one at the Carlyle. Too bad, because I’ll bet she’s got some backstage stories that are real doozies.) What you get in this jubilant musical journey is a trip down Memory Lane, arm in arm every step of the way. It’s a great trip, and she provides the postcards.

Accompanied by a five-piece band headed by the world-class pianist Don Rebic, the gamine with the still-dynamic vocal power refurbishes the legendary lyrics Leonard Gershe wrote for Judy Garland on “Born in a Trunk” to fit her own life, as she shares amusing reminiscences of her honorary “aunts and uncles” from the Apollo days—Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong (“Up a Lazy River”), Ella Fitzgerald (“A-Tisket, A-Tasket”) and Dinah Washington, with her five husbands and a potty mouth that turned the air bluer than pot smoke (“I Wanna Be Around”). She takes chances. A swing-trot tempo on “Hello, Young Lovers” from The King and I gives the Rodgers-Hammerstein ballad an adventurous feel. She can belt out Gershwin material from Porgy and Bess in a voice big and rich yet restrained in all the right places. The aching but rarely heard torch song “Being Good” (from Hallelujah, Baby!) makes you wonder why more song stylists haven’t investigated it for themselves. On Jerry Herman’s “If He Walked Into My Life” (from Mame), her signature vibrato on the ends of notes is shiningly intact, with a musical intensity that informs the lyrics, but she’s also grown. Her voice is pure and lusty, but a spirituality has crept in—which should make her the perfect choice for the new musical she’s planning about the life of Lena Horne. She has an elegant allure, and a perfect artistry, yet she’s as down to earth as potato salad.

There’s no UGH in Uggams. She is splendid all the way.

reed@observer.com