If you try and fail to sell your 4,415-square-foot, 45th-floor, Sheila Bridges–designed, nine-and-a-half-room, four-bedroom condominium, you try again. And if your downstairs neighbor is trying to sell his 4,415-square-foot condo as well, you agree to bundle the two together as a super-gigantic, would-be duplex.
According to a listing, the art collector Peter Norton, who was briefly a Buddhist monk before becoming a PC software titan, and Richard O. Ullman, a pharmaceutical benefits management mogul, have teamed up to market their Trump International condos for a combined $34.7 million.
Even though Mr. Ullman has the lower unit, he has been asking $18.45 million for the condo, which, as The Observer reported in March, is more than twice what he paid five years ago. Mr. Norton’s apartment, with a customized wet bar, special oak floors and dual-mode electronic shading system, is the same size, but it came on the market with Corcoran for $17.9 million in January. A month later, the brokerage’s Web site said the apartment had gone to contract, but if there was a deal, it fell through: The unit was re-listed in March. A few weeks later, the price tag was cut to $16.25 million.
Mr. Norton now wants $3,680 per square foot (which is high), and Mr. Ullman is asking $4,178 per square foot (which is preposterously high); their new $34.7 million joint-listing splits the difference at $3,929. What’s more, the two-unit duplex would cost $277,068 per year in monthly maintenance charges and taxes, according to listing information.
But then again, it would also have 8,830 square feet; 15 rooms; 12 marble bathrooms; eight bedrooms; customized lighting and sound systems in Mr. Ullman’s unit; plus preprogrammed lighting and some soundproofing in Mr. Norton’s apartment, which was designed by Ms. Bridges, who decorated Bill Clinton’s Harlem offices.
Anne Marie Moriarty and Antonio Cosentino, the Corcoran brokers in charge of Mr. Norton’s apartment, did not return several messages. Reached at her office, Mr. Ullman’s broker, Susan James, would say only, “You have a good night.” In November, The Observer reported that she was handling his duplex at 15 Central Park West, an apartment he had bought that year for $23.5 million but was quietly marketing for $75 million. It has not sold.
mabelson@observer.com
