Amazing and amazingly dull, all at the same time.

Time Warner is not the only big fish cashing out on Columbus Circle. The Lincoln Square mega-development is also losing David Kwok Po Li, the CEO and chairman of Bank of East Asia and former Hong Kong politician, who has just sold his 72nd-floor condo. (Related honcho Kenneth Himmel also cleared out late last year.)

Nor is he the only one who stands to profit from the decision. While Time Warner is contemplating how much it could make by clearing out of its headquarters, a process that might well set off a bidding war, Mr. Li did very, very well, doubling his money in under a decade.

An $18.8 million view.

The Hong Kong honcho bought the 3,491-square-foot condo back in 2004 as Harbour-Land Enterprises Limited, paying $9.68 million. Now, he's sold the four-bedroom, 4.5-bath spread for an astounding $18.8 million, according to city records.

That Mr. Li agreed to buy the duplex (with an internal elevator, to journey between just two floors) in the days immediately following September 11, 2001, when living in twin towers was a palm-sweat inducing proposition, may have helped him lock in a good price. And he wasn't shy about trying to get a much, much better one when he sold. He listed the apartment in May for $20 million with Corcoran brokers Carrie Chiang and Janet Wong.

The mysterious buyer is AEH Jay Corp, care of a Rockefeller Plaza law firm. Whoever he, she or they are, AEH will enjoy "stunning Central Park views" from every room, according to the listing, and luxurious amenities as impeccable and inscrutable as a foreign banker.

Whoever AEH is, do stainless steel kitchen appliances made by Sub-Zero and Miele make their hearts leap as much as a shift in currency exchange rates? Or are these features simply the basic accoutrements of the cash-coddled life for a Time Warner Center-buying corporation? A life where one does not have to so much as share a master bathroom with his or her partner (the suite has two).

When it comes right down to it, why share the suite, or even the apartment at all? We predict that the next trend in luxury real estate will be his and her apartments.

Yeah, Gray has favorites. (NYT)

Apparently, we aren't the only ones who have wondered what Christopher Gray's favorite buildings are. In this week's Streetscapes column, Mr. Gray admits that he's frequently asked to name them. After all, an architectural historian who spends so much time not only staring at edifices, but researching their histories must have developed some strong preferences. Like a good parent, he's always begged off selecting stand-outs, giving a stock answer: whatever one he's currently researching. The thrill of discovery and all that.

Until now.

This week, Mr. Gray confesses that he does, in fact, have favorites. Among them the dominating, domineering, Darth Vader of skyscrapers, the Time Warner Center.

Really?!

True, we should have expected that Mr. Gray, despite being an architectural historian, would have some more modern preferences. But what does he like about it? Besides the fact that in terms of streetscapes, few buildings have proven more transformative.

"From Hell’s Kitchen, from Central Park, from Lincoln Center, from the Plaza, from all directions the varying angles of the curved towers catch and bounce both daylight and moonlight in the most uncanny way, like the eyes of the Mona Lisa following you around the room," Mr. Gray writes. Also, it disrupts his "traditionalist inclinations."

Kind of like feeling weirdly attracted to an ugly, totally not-you sweater at the store?

As far as residential building's go, Mr. Gray's decidedly less shocking choice is 1 Sutton Place. The grand old dames of the East River definitely deserve a shout out and Mr. Gray's explanation for picking 1 Sutton above all the others is reasonable: its graciousness, its elegant simplicity and the light flooding in from multiple exposures—a great luxury in a city with so many shadows. Mr. Gray notes that it comes off as both generous and patrician, not all haughty like 740 Park Avenue, that Upper East Side fortress of money and power with wary gate-keepers stationed several deep at every entrance.

What are some of Mr. Gray's other top picks? The Church of Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue, the Cities Service Building at 70 Pine Street, the 1927 loft building built by Electus T. Backus at 419 Park Avenue South and 29th Street and the Great Lawn of Central Park.

kvelsey@observer.com

On a recent evening at the 92nd Street Y, Stephen Ross, chairman of the Related Companies, reflected on four decades of transformation—for the city, where he has built more apartments than almost any other developer of his generation, and also for himself. In September, Mr. Ross, 72, stepped down as the CEO of the once-humble affordable housing outfit he transformed into a luxury real estate behemoth.

Not that he’s stepping aside. There he was a few weeks later, alongside Mayor Bloomberg and Council Speaker Christine Quinn on the formerly desolate Far West Side, breaking ground on the Hudson Yards project, a glass and steel city within a city that is actually larger, in terms of square footage, than downtown Portland or downtown Baltimore.

“What’s good for the city is the first thing,” Mr. Ross told the audience at the Y. “I think if you really take that into consideration, the opportunities open up.”

On stage, Mr. Ross wore a navy suit and pink tie and sat next to fellow real estate mogul William Mack of AREA Property Advisors, as Businessweek senior editor Diane Brady asked the two friends about their long careers. About a decade ago, Messrs. Ross and Mack teamed up to build the Time Warner Center, the twin-towered behemoth that rose on Columbus Circle in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, an unwitting glass echo of what had been lost. Before the project began to rise, doubts were widespread, but Mr. Ross recognized a unique combination of location, transportation and public support that has become the hallmark of his success.

Even before the attacks, the city had been “muddling along,” as Mr. Ross put it, but he could never forget gazing at the site, home to Robert Moses’s loathsome Coliseum, from his old office on the other side of the park, at 59th Street and Madison. The opportunity, with the park and subway, at the axis of Midtown and uptown, was undeniable. “The location was superb,” Mr. Ross said. “I looked at it as the best site in the city that had been undeveloped. I really thought it deserved a world-class project.”

From his revival of Union Square to his partnerships with Equinox and Danny Meyer, everything has been preparing Mr. Ross and the Related Companies for creating the 26-acre, $12 billion Hudson Yards, the city’s 21st-century Rockefeller Center. The best views, the best services, the best address. “Everyone sees the potential now,” Mr. Ross boasted at the Y.

Related’s rise has been entwined with the rebirth of New York from a bankrupt dystopia into a glittering place of wealth. The evolution has undeniably improved safety and heightened public investment, but it has also perpetuated a view, held by some New Yorkers, that the city is losing its character and diversity to a wave of glassy boxes. While no single developer is responsible for this gentrification, Related’s trophy towers have strongly correlated with the luxury surge.

And no developer has navigated City Hall with such success. Mr. Ross became friends with Dan Doctoroff, the former deputy mayor for economic development in the Bloomberg administration, when the two were part of a group that bought the New York Islanders in 1997. Critics argued that their relationship gave Related an inside track on development bids, but others credited the company’s appetite for complexity and a willingness to take on daunting projects.

“He understands what’s needed on the city’s side,” said Steve Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, where Mr. Ross was chairman for two years. “He’s in it for the long haul.”

SUCCESS has enriched Mr. Ross, whose net worth is an estimated $3.1 billion, according to Forbes. He owns the Miami Dolphins and though a registered Democrat, became a champion of Mitt Romney in the recent presidential campaign, donating over $100,000.

And yet Related originated from disappointment. After graduating from law school and working as a tax attorney in his native Michigan in the 1960s, Mr. Ross arrived in New York to work at the now-defunct investment bank Bear Stearns. “I was working for a Wall Street firm, and I got fired for the wrong reasons,” he said at the 92nd Street Y. “The person I was working for didn’t really realize my capabilities.”

But as Mr. Ross noted in a 2009 graduation address at Michigan University’s School of Business, which bears his name after a $100 million donation, “Bear Stearns is gone. Steve Ross is still here.”

Mr. Ross wanted his business to be sustainable, without relying on boom and bust cycles, so he focused on affordable rental housing. His first projects were small apartment complexes financed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Wasaka, R.I., and Middletown, N.Y. He then closed in on New York, building in Rockland and Westchester Counties and southern Connecticut.

Mr. Ross eventually entered Manhattan with an affordable housing project in 1976, and his big break came when he won a bid in 1980 for River Walk, a development site just north of Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Town.

Related won the rights to build some 1,800 apartments, a hotel and ample retail (a formula the company would replicate again and again), but the biggest prize was having the Related name run on the front page of The New York Times. This immediately led to more deals, in Battery Park City and on the Upper East Side. And thus his conquest of Manhattan began. “It was first survival and concentrating on a company, then it was a question of diversifying,” Mr. Ross said. “I knew I didn’t want to stay in affordable housing forever.” 

In the early 1990s, Manhattan’s Union Square was nicknamed “Needle Park.” “It was really dangerous back then,” said Robert K. Futterman, chairman and CEO of Robert K. Futterman & Associates, a top retail brokerage that has worked with Related on numerous projects. “Though it was a great transportation hub, it didn’t have great retail.”

The district’s historic buildings had begun giving way to newcomers, starting with Zeckendorf Towers, built in 1987 after the demolition of the Union Square Hotel. But Mr. Ross first focused on old buildings, partnering with Starwood Hotels and Resorts to convert a historic Beaux Arts building on the northeastern side of the park into the W Hotel. Related also owns the historic building on the north side now occupied by the massive Barnes & Noble, one of the bookseller’s top outlets.

Related’s biggest mark was 1 Union Square South, completed in 1999, which sits at the terminus of Park Avenue South and looms over the park. “It was a very important site as a focal point,” Mr. Ross said. Related has been lauded for the aesthetics of some of its projects, but not this one. A blank wall spans an entire city block, and it isn’t helped by the swirling digital clock Related commissioned to liven up the façade.

“The south side of Union Square has been trashed, from an architectural point of view,” said Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council.

Aesthetic questions aside, the building has been a financial coup. Monthly apartment rents now go as high as $17,000, and dozens of condos have sprung up around the park in the past decade as a result. “It was really one of the first urban power centers,” said Mr. Futterman.

As 1 Union Square South was rising, Related was bidding for what would become the Time Warner Center.

For two decades, Mort Zuckerman’s Boston Properties had tried and failed to make something of Robert Moses’s unloved old Coliseum. When his deal fell apart, the Giuliani administration put it out to bid. Mr. Ross quickly mobilized. He would give Jazz at Lincoln Center a prime view overlooking Central Park and rope in Richard Parsons, the Time Warner CEO, as the anchor tenant in the office portion of the tower.

“He’d been in 75 Rock for 35 years with no issues,” Mr. Ross recalled, referring to Time Warner’s old headquarters at Rockefeller Center. “I told him, ‘This isn’t about space, this is about showcasing your company. Nobody knows who you are; they think you’re a part of NBC.’ That struck a nerve.”

He also lured the Mandarin Oriental hotel chain and a clutch of Fifth Avenue brands, like Hugo Boss and Cole Haan, for a “vertical mall” in the base of the tower. A popular model in Chicago, such retail spaces have always struggled in New York, where storefronts are believed to be king.

In the end, Related beat out the likes of Tishman Speyer, Bruce Ratner and Donald Trump. Though the development seemed expensive at the time, costing $410 million for the site and $1.7 billion to build, it has paid off handsomely. “We stole it,” said Mr. Ross.
“It’s become a destination point.” said Rosemary Scanlon, dean of New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. “There’s a lot of vision there, as well as courage.”

Paul Goldberger initially panned the structure in The New Yorker, calling the towers “banal.” Nevertheless, he commends the developer for the architectural diversity of its portfolio. “I think Related has been very good at bringing a range of serious architecture ideas into the mainstream,” he said. “They know that the market today won’t accept junk.” 

HUDSON YARDS is its own city, and not a small one at that. The shortest towers will be 75 stories high, and designed by some of the world’s best architects. The tallest will surpass the Empire State Building, with a higher observation deck. Hudson Yards will have its own cultural center and a mall twice the size of Time Warner Center, and nearly half the 26-acre site spanning eight city blocks will be given over to public open space. It will be as if someone has taken a massive swath of Midtown, perfected it, and dropped it on top of the once-desolate Far West Side. And it will only cost $12 billion and a dozen years to build.

The project reflects Related’s growing influence in City Hall. Three years ago, in a rare defeat, Related’s plan to convert the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx into a massive shopping mall was rejected by the City Council because Mr. Ross refused to agree to require that retailers there pay a living wage. Mr. Ross walked rather than back down. This year, Hudson Yards was exempted from a citywide living wage bill, which some critics claim was the result of a $34,000 donation to Ms. Quinn’s mayoral war chest.

Already, the area is filling in around him, with luxury buildings popping up in the once-unthinkable wasteland of 10th and 11th Avenues in the 40s and 50s. “Already, we’re getting our best rents in Chelsea,” Mr. Ross said. For proof, look to the nearby MiMA tower, in which TIAA-CREF just paid $551 million for a 70 percent stake, and where the top floor units rent in the $10,000 to $25,000 range. The tower is almost fully leased. It has a doggie spa, and it is at 42nd and 10th.

The case could of course be made that by burnishing all these outlying areas, Mr. Ross is leaving the city overpolished. Not only has he shifted from affordable to luxury housing, he’s fighting living wages for the working class while creating apartments that sell on average for more than a million dollars, and frequently tens of millions. If any developer represents the go-go highs of the Bloomberg era, it is Stephen Ross, even if his approach often leaves the average New Yorker on the sidelines, gazing up at glass peaks.

In 2017, Related plans to move its corporate headquarters from the Time Warner Center to Hudson Yards. And Mr. Ross will trade his Time Warner penthouse, with its Central Park view, for a fresh perspective atop what he calls the new heart of New York.

editorial@observer.com

A tale of two skyscrapers?

The sky may be the limit when it comes to constructing cloud-skimming Manhattan luxury condos, but when a storm strikes, it's the sidewalks below that developers need to worry about. In the last month, our eyes and cameras were fearfully focused on One57's dangling crane boom, but it's not the first time that high winds have made it mortally dangerous to walk beneath an under-construction skyscraper. Back in April 2004, a freakish wind storm—gusts of 34 mph were recorded in Central Park—dislodged construction material from an upper floor of the still-under-construction Time Warner Center.

Perhaps the most remarkable difference between the two incidents was Mayor Michael Bloomberg's reaction. In the case of the Time Warner Center, he chastised the developer and ordered work stopped immediately. After the One57 incident, he defended Extell, noting that high wind gusts often cause blameless accidents (which, to be fair, may well be the case and gusts during Sandy did reach 60 mph).

Michael Gross, chronicler of the city's most luxurious real estate, mentioned the discrepancy when we recently called him up to chat about his upcoming book on 15 Central Park West. Hearing Mayor Bloomberg's supportive, point-no-fingers response to the crane incident reminded Mr. Gross of the mayor's decidedly harsher words to the Related Companies. (Mr. Gross begged off discussing the matter further because he numbers among the 57th Street residents displaced by the One57 crane incident.)

A brief search of New York Times articles from the time of the Time Warner Center mishap revealed that the mayor did indeed have vastly different things to say about the two wind-related incidents.

''The law says that you have to batten down all construction material every single day before you go home, and this is a site where we've given four summonses out,'' Mayor Bloomberg said in the wake of the Time Warner incident. ''We are not going to have to walk down the streets and look up all the time at the building wondering whether something is going to come off it.''

He ordered work stopped until the developer came up with a plan "to protect against dangerous gusts."

Granted, the four summonses may help to explain the mayor's steely response. There had also been an earlier onsite death when a construction worker was struck on the head by a piece of falling debris.

In the case of the One57 crane, which was inspected the day before the storm, Bloomberg warned the public not to leap to any conclusions.

"It's conceivable that nobody did anything wrong whatsoever and it wasn't even a malfunction, it was just a strange gust of wind," Bloomberg said.  "Just because it was inspected, that doesn't mean that God doesn't do things or that metal doesn't fail. There's no reason to think at this point in time that the inspection wasn't adequate."

The dangling One57 crane, which displaced residents up and down the block for days, was still, as far as we know, a freak accident, although an extensive investigation is underway. And naturally, neighbors have started filing lawsuits.

Why did Bloomberg immediately defend One57 rather than scolding the developer like he did with Time Warner? Was Bloomberg trying to keep everyone calm and copacetic in the midst of a weather disaster? Did his response have anything to do with when the projects were developed (One57 on Bloomberg's watch, Time Warner on Guiliani's)? Or did the two gusts of winds somehow justify vastly different responses?

A representative for the mayor's office told The Observer that the difference in response was mainly a factor of the wind speed, writing that 30 mph winds "are rare, but not that rare," while 60 mph winds "are extremely rare."

Just to be safe, we're going to  steer clear of under-construction skyscrapers on all windy days.

kvelsey@observer.com

The living room is surprisingly old-fashioned for the Time Warner Center.

Can we really blame Kenneth A. Himmel for wanting to put the Time Warner Center behind him? The President and CEO of Related Urban spent years overseeing the skyscraper's construction, then he moved into a three-bedroom condo on the 67th floor.

"Developing Time Warner Center was like climbing the mountain of mountains," Mr. Himmel declares on Related's website. We guess he also tired of climbing that same mountain day after day, even if it was in a super-sleek high-speed elevator. After more than a decade, the bloom was off the rose.

Mr. Himmel, who first listed the 2,416-square-foot apartment in 2010, has finally sold the space for $13.8 million, according to city records. The buyer is the mysterious Columbus Skyline LLC., which is registered to 10 East 39th Street, Suite 1110.

Ditto the bedroom. Maybe sleek glass just wasn't Mr. Himmel's speed.

One thing is for certain: the buyer is sure to be getting a choice pad. All sellers generally claim that their apartment is one of the finest in the building, but we're pretty sure Mr. Himmel wrangled one of the best spots at 25 Columbus Circle. Although it wasn't enough to get the most recent $15.25 million asking price, a discount from the 2011 listing price of $18.37 million but not so far from the 2010 list price of $15 million.

Amazing park views, a paneled 27-by-20 great room and a "magical cherry paneled library with bar and en suite bath" are nice, after all, but not, apparently, magical enough for the asking price.  Perhaps Sotheby's listing brokers Elizabeth Sample and Brenda Powers should have elaborated a little more on what was so magical.

It's unclear what, if anything, Mr. Himmel paid for the unit. City records show a deed transfer between him and the company for $0. Maybe the condo was a project bonus? Alas, said records do not reveal where Mr. Himmel is going next. Maybe he has his eye on one of Related's still Hudson Yards skyscrapers? Only time will tell.

kvelsey@observer.com

More money for the neighboring towers?

It has been, thus far, a year of almost incandescent hopes for the Manhattan luxury market. The $88 million sale at 15 CPW, the $70 million sale at the Ritz Carlton and rising like a beacon to the south, the unfinished One57 tower, with a penthouse in contract for more than $90 million.

Indeed, the market has burned so brightly for the owners of trophy and would-be and could-possibly-be trophy properties that it may even have blinded a few to the realities of the real estate market—while it could be described as magical, it is not magic. Is One57 a rising tide that will lift all boats (yachts?) or an ultra-luxury development that most other buildings breaking the skyline can't compete with in finishes or prices? Or even worse: a view-blocker, shadow-caster and general reminder that places like the Time Warner Center and the Trump International are not as new as they once were?

CitySpire residents, for one, seem to believe that One57's existence gives them carte blanche to ask unheard of prices, not only for the market, but for the building.  From the $100 million triplex that was purchased for just $4.5 million in the early 1990s as raw space to the $9 million three-bedroom that came on the market yesterday—a condo that if sold at the asking price would more than triple the highest price ever paid for a finished unit in the building. It would also command $1,000 a square foot more than anything else at CitySpire ever has.

"It's the new normal! I know that these apartments will go very very high," declared Marie Bianco, the Prudential Douglas Elliman broker with the $9 million listing (she also has a number of other less expensive listing in the building). "This is priced right, you can't find them anywhere. The thing is, One57 just popped up and it's in the same vicinity, so why shouldn't it get these prices?"

One57 didn't block CitySpire's view, she reasoned, in fact, the two buildings basically shared a view. And while the building itself was older and in need of some "patching up," the apartment itself had been "perfectly renovated." In fact, she estimated that the average price per square foot had leapt from around $2,100 to somewhere between $3,000 and $3,500—though the building has yet to see a sale that would bolster such a reality.

Other brokers estimated that modest gains might be seen in other nearby towers, but not without merit. One57 could command such lofty prices because there was nothing like it. Did One57 change things?

"A little bit," said Corcoran broker Lauren Muss, who recently rented a 3-bedroom condo on the 75th floor of the Time Warner Center that had been listed for sale at $50 million. "It's going to help bring prices up, but only where it's deserving."

"One57 is a product of its own," she added, and for $90 million, an apartment would have to be just as nice as the penthouse at One57—which is no easy feat to pull off.

"It has to have those views, unobstructed views, it has to have double-height ceilings, it has to have a brand-new renovation."

Of course, for some buildings, One57 has been only a nuisance. It's a fact of life in New York that, all broker boasts to the contrary, very few views are forever views. Metropolitan Tower, a 78-story office-and-condo combo that sits across the street from One57 at 146 West 57th Street, is not benefiting from Gary Barnett's stellar sales record. Besides having a construction site as a neighbor all these years, its views now look directly out onto Extell's tower. So long, Central Park.

Halstead broker Renee Fishman told us that she'd had a difficult time selling a 50th floor apartment at the tower, even though you could only see the rising tower from one of the rooms. Barely. By pressing your nose against the window and angling your neck.

"People would go right up to the window and crane their neck and look up and say they could see One57."

Buyers are spooked by rising buildings, Ms. Fishman told us, but the fear dissipates once the building nears completion. People can see that many of the tower's apartments still have expansive views (and can confirm that One57 will not obliterate the sun).  She even thought that One57 would help draw those who might have been hesitant about Metropolitan Tower's Midtown location in the past, encouraging "buyers who may have previously dismissed this area to give the neighborhood another look, and this can help boost prices generally in the area."

After all, if 57th Street is good enough for billionaires...

Does it matter where your condo tower was located, then? Did it matter at all?

"One sale doesn't make a market, so I guess you could say one building doesn't make a market," said appraisal guru Jonathan Miller when we asked him about the impact of One57 on condos in and around Columbus Circle and just south of the park. "You do have people that are trying to take advantage of a new high water mark in an area and believe that it transfers to every other unit in the area. You see people test it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't."

But would they get it? And as much as $1,000 a square foot more?

He laughed before answering. "My sense is that it's a plus for the immediate area in the general sense—there's a beautiful new building and you'll see an upgrade or expansion of residential services, street level retail in the small radius of the building. But it's not a redefining, it's not like there's a sea change and you flip a switch and there's a new market."

kvelsey@observer.com

The Dollars, preachers of the prosperity gospel and leaders of Georgia-based World Changers Church, have sold the two-bedroom condo on the 67th floor of the Time Warner Center for $3.75 million, according to city records.

The two bedroom condo, listed with broker Tytus Ciechorski at CMB Realty, doesn't look as opulent as we'd expected for a couple that motors around in not one, but two Rolls Royces, but then again, it is a pied-a-terre. And while the rooms are boxy and kind of meh, the views are stunning and the address is swanky.

The Dollars—and yes that is their real name—have been expanding their foothold in New York over the last half-decade, holding services at jumbo venues like Madison Square Garden, Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers, the Hilton, Manhattan Center, the New York Marriott at Brooklyn Bridge, Tribeca Performing Arts Center and the Javits Center. There were even rumors that Mr. Dollar had his eye on buying the Kingsbridge Armory for a mega-church.

Although Mr. Dollar has taken some heat over pricey possessions like private jets and a million-dollar Atlanta home—Congress is probing the non-profit status of World Changers and several other major televangelists—his followers have hailed such opulence as signs that Mr. Dollar is living the prosperity gospel that he preaches.

And the condo, although it sold under the $4.15 million ask to buyers Carl and Elyse Eckhaus, still proved a nice investment for the Dollars, who bought it for only $2.48 million in 2005. Yet another example of Mr. Dollar's talent for turning godliness into gold!

We wondered if the sale might mean that the Dollars are abandoning the stronghold of sin and unholiness that is New York. But World Changers insists that the Dollars are here to stay.

"We will always have a church in New York!" exclaimed one of the faithful when she was reached on the phone.

kvelsey@observer.com

Who would ever steal from this guy? (NY Social Diary)

Did power broker Michael Shvo forget to check the references on his $6.5 million dollar apartment-sitting application?

It appears so!

The Real Deal reports that Shvo's house-sitter, Sandra Miranda, has been sentenced for 18-36 months to a state prison for stealing $44,000 and 7,500 British pounds (about $12,000) from Shvo's apartment.

But the kick is that it wasn't her first time stealing from successful Manhattanites. In 2001, Miranda was charged with stealing a credit card from an employee that died in the World Trade Center attack:

In 2001, the police charged her with stealing a credit card belonging to friend Laura Gilly, an employee of commercial brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald, who died in the World Trade Center attacks. While checking on Gilly’s cat following the attacks, Miranda allegedly snatched the card and later ran up charges of $5,000 thanks to a three-day spending spree at the Staten Island Mall.

What may be the saddest thing for Mr. Shvo, though, is this is about the only thing going on for the once-renowned deal marker. Oh, how the mighty have been robbed.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The store, which opened another Manhattan store last October in Soho, will take about half of the roughly 15,000 square feet formerly occupied by the now-defunct bookstore chain Borders on the retail complex’s second floor.

Time Warner Center. (Courtesy Property Shark)

In a review of C. Wonder’s Soho location in recent months, The New York Times opined whether the company’s line of clothing and home decor items was an homage to Ms. Burch’s aesthetic or an attempt to steal her lunch. Like Ms. Burch, the company’s style exudes the uppercrust but is priced for the masses. Even C. Wonder’s logo bears a slight resemblance to Ms. Burch’s iconic medallion, which adorns ballet flats the world over.

Mr. and Ms. Burch divorced in 2006. Before Mr. Burch, Tory, whose good looks and blond hair also made her a popular face among high society in the city, was married to the real estate investor Billy Macklowe.

A spokeswoman for C. Wonder wouldn’t comment on the deal at Time Warner.

H&M is rumored to be in talks for the other half of the Borders space. A spokeswoman at the company wouldn’t comment.

“We’re doing very well here with ten stores from Soho to Harlem,” said the H&M spokeswoman, Nicole Christie. “We plan to continue our expansion. We are planning to open more stores for this year, and that’s not a secret.”

Borders declared bankruptcy last year, leaving vacant several large stores in Manhattan, many of which were quickly filled. As The Commercial Observer exclusively reported last year, the drug store chain Walgreens took a 20,000-square-foot space that the book store formerly occupied at 100 Broadway.

Dgeiger@observer.com

The five-bedroom, five-bath home was most recently listed by Dolly Lenz of Douglas Elliman, who extolls the "4,000-square-feet of grand living space and high ceilings." A previous listing from Elizabeth Sample and Brenda Powers notes that the place was decorated by top designer Kenneth Alpert, while Ms. Lenz demurs, saying only a "top AD 100 designer" had worked on the home, a reference to Architectural Digest's list of the world's best builders and decorators.

The condo features a 675-square-foot great room and wide views of Central Park. Littered with walk-in-closets (at least five by The Observer's count), there is ample room for laundered goods.

The Murphys former home, which they bought in April 2009 for $12.6 million. was purchased anonymously through an LLC apparently based in Singapore. This is only the latest big sale in the blockbuster building, where the penthouse, once rented by Jay-Z, was also sold to an anonymous Asian buyer. That property fetched $31 million last year.

eknutsen@observer.com