Morning-radio czar Don Imus has just put his eight-room duplex penthouse co-op at 75 Central Park West on the market for $11 million.
“We’d like a bigger place,” Mr. Imus said. “I don’t want to sell it, but my wife wants to sell it. She makes all those kinds of decisions, so I acquiesced.”
Mr. Imus is in no rush to unload his perch at Central Park West and 67th Street.
“We’re not hysterical to sell, and we’ll only sell if we get what it’s worth,” he said.
If he does find a willing buyer for his Central Park West abode, Mr. Imus said he would like to stay in the neighborhood if he can find a larger space.
According to real-estate sources, Mr. Imus, 63, paid $2.3 million for his Central Park West nest in 1994.
The two-bedroom unit measures approximately 2,000 square feet, plus a 1,300-square-foot terrace with giant views of Central Park and the city skyline. The spread also includes a fitness room, three wood-burning fireplaces and high curved ceilings.
Mr. Imus also owns a waterfront weekend retreat in Connecticut and a 4,000-acre ranch near Santa Fe, N.M., that he operates as a camp for children with cancer and other serious illnesses.
Heidi Berger of Douglas Elliman, who shares the listing with William Postrion, a senior vice president at Douglas Elliman, declined to comment.
One year after landing a Hamptons summer perch, George Stephanopoulos, the former Clinton adviser turned pundit and host of ABC’s political talk show This Week , sold the three-bedroom Hamptons spread that he bought with his wife, Alexandra Wentworth. The buyers-technology investor Michael Recanati and his partner, attorney Ira Statfeld-paid $1.2 million for the two-story shingle cottage at 54 Mill Hill Lane in East Hampton.
The house sits on a quarter-acre lot and features a small pool, detached garage and second-floor sun deck. The recently renovated three-bedroom spread, modest by Hamptons standards, includes a modern kitchen with marble tile and Sub-Zero appliances. During the 1980’s, John F. Kennedy Jr. rented the property as a summer retreat.
Mr. Stephanopoulos was traveling and didn’t return calls for comment, but sources who know the couple say they couldn’t make it to the summer retreat often enough to justify keeping it.
Mr. Stephanopoulos and Ms. Wentworth, the host of CBS’s Living It Up with Ali and Jack , now split their time between Manhattan and Washington, D.C. At the beginning of the week they reside in Manhattan, where Ms. Wentworth tapes her morning program, while spending the weekends at their five-bedroom ivy-covered brick townhouse in tree-lined Georgetown, which the couple purchased for $2.275 million in April.
The East Hampton sale comes following a whirlwind year for Mr. Stephanopoulos, in which he went from Washington bachelor and rising media impresario to married father and a fixture on the Sunday-morning political-talk circuit. In July, Mr. Stephanopoulos sold his $2.4 million, three-bedroom condo on East 19th Street, which he’d purchased just six months earlier.
While Mr. Stephanopoulos has undone his Hamptons roots, Messrs. Recanati and Statfeld have shored up their Hamptons holdings with the purchase of his house. The couple, who recently made headlines with their efforts to launch a new $20 million, 200-student high school with a $5 million endowment in Bridgehampton, also own a house on nearby Windmill Hill Lane, where they reside with their 10-year-old adopted son.
A spokesman for Mr. Recanati said the couple plans to use the new East Hampton property as a guest house for visiting summer guests and family.
Arnold Kopelson, the Academy Award–winning Hollywood producer of Oliver Stone’s Vietnam drama Platoon and box-office hits such as The Fugitive and the 1982 sex comedy Porky’s , recently sold his 1 Central Park West apartment at the Trump International Hotel and Tower for $5.3 million. His five-room spread on the 36th floor covers 1,767 square feet and has expansive views of Central Park.
Mr. Kopelson, 68, is trading up for a new three-bedroom apartment at the soon-to-be-completed Time Warner Center and decided to unload his Trump property.
Two years ago, he signed contracts on two adjacent units on the 62nd floor at the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle. (The final selling price of the two units won’t be part of the public record until the building is completed; Mr. Kopelson declined to reveal what he paid.)
Mr. Kopelson plans to combine the units, and when the project is complete next year, his spread will total 4,500 square feet and feature full park and city views.
“I actually loved the old apartment,” Mr. Kopelson said from his West Hollywood office. “But as great as the views were at 1 Central Park, I’ll now be on a higher floor with better exposures.”
His Time Warner perch has open views on three sides and is more than double the size of his previous apartment.
Mr. Kopelson, who spends about 30 days a year in New York depending on his films’ shooting schedules, decided to stay in the neighborhood given the luxurious amenities offered at the gleaming Time Warner complex.
“It’s the most exciting neighborhood in New York,” he said.
Specifically, he was looking forward to the restaurants set to open in the building’s fourth-floor food court.
“I’ve eaten at Thomas Keller’s French Laundry numerous times in California,” Mr. Kopelson said. “And I’m thrilled he will be opening a restaurant in New York.”
upper east side
330 East 83rd Street
Two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op.
Asking: $499,000. Selling: $495,000.
Maintenance: $1,171; 59 percent tax-deductible.
Time on the market: six months.
COMFORTS OF HOME When this young United Nations diplomat from Sweden moved to Manhattan for a posting at headquarters, she thought she was leaving behind the bucolic splendor of her native Scandinavia-until she found this Upper East Side prewar apartment with her husband, who works in commercial real estate. The newly wedded couple, both in their 30’s, had been renting for a year, and when thoughts of starting a family prompted them to settle down, they were drawn to the intimate feel of this unique three-floor building with plenty of greenery provided by the tree-lined backyard garden. “This was a great small-family building. They really liked the feeling of getting to know their neighbors,” said exclusive agent Mary Jo McNally, a senior associate at the Corcoran Group who represented both the buyer and seller. “They eventually want to have children, so the excellent schools in the neighborhood were a big attraction.”
Another major attraction was the building’s detailed finishings, which date back to 1893. The third-floor unit, a combined one-bedroom and studio, measures 1,125 square feet and features hardwood floors, bright southern exposures and an open kitchen with exposed red brick walls.
upper west side
235 West 70th Street
Two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op.
Maintenance: $1,429; 40 percent tax-deductible.
Asking: $775,000. Selling: $779,000.
Time on the market: two weeks.
reverse migration The sellers of this apartment are a young couple in their 30’s who decided it was time to leave New York for the suburbs-and they found a buyer following the reverse migratory pattern: After retiring from an executive position at AT&T, a divorced woman in her 50’s decided that she wanted a change from the staid suburban environs of Stamford, Conn., and purchased this two-bedroom duplex on a tree-lined Upper West Side block. “She wanted a life change,” said her broker, Gail Gros, a vice president at William B. May. “She wanted the city life. It wasn’t enough for her to be living in the suburbs by herself.” Though the buyer was looking for a cosmopolitan living experience, she clearly wanted to retain the trappings and conveniences of her former suburban spread. “She wanted a duplex and the feeling of a home, given that the move was such a drastic change,” Ms. Gros said. The buyer found it in this duplex unit, which was renovated in 2001. The 1,240-square-foot apartment features an open loft-style kitchen, a built-in washer and dryer and teakwood finishings, lending the home-like feel she desired. After viewing six apartments, she outbid a competing buyer and landed her piece of the big city. Brian Rice, a vice president with the Corcoran Group, represented the sellers.
