Russian-born and Harvard-educated finance billionaire Leonard Blavatnik has signed a letter of intent to buy a $150 million apartment on East 77th Street, The New York Post is reporting this morning.
"The price would be twice as large as the previous record listing in New York City, and nearly $50 million more than last year’s sale of the De Menil estate in East Hampton, believed to be the priciest residential transaction in the country," Braden Keil writes.
Readers of The Observer‘s Manhattan Transfers column will know Mr. Blavatnik’s name. Back in 2005, he tried to buy Mary Tyler Moore’s 5,740-square-foot prewar coop on the eighth floor of 927 Fifth Avenue, but his $18.5 million offer was rejected by the exacting co-op board. The rejection seems to have stuck: the same thing happened when the co-op board at the San Remo on Central Park West rejected his bid to buy and combine three units into a massive aerie overlooking Central Park.
Since then, he’s been buying with a vengeance. This summer, he added Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s 31-foot-wide townhouse at 15 East 64th Street for around $51 million to his home collection that includes a 14-room Fifth Avenue co-op, bought earlier in the year for $27.5 million, and a townhouse on East 63rd Street for which he paid $31.25 million in 2005.
His new triplex combines five units totaling nearly 30,000 square feet that are preselling at The Mark Hotel at 25 East 77th Street, which is going the way of lots of the old dowager hotels: getting a gut renovation and a transformation into a glamorous condominium. Prices for units in the new condo building have not yet gotten approval from the state Attorney General’s office, so Mr. Blavatnik’s transaction is still tentative in the technical sense. Louise Sunshine, who is marketing the unfinished condos, did not comment for the Post article.
The apartment, according to the Post, also comes with 3,900 square feet of outdoor space including a huge rooftop terrace with a fireplace. The condos will provide maid, linen and room service.
