Josephina, the Lincoln Center standby, stopped serving its pre-theater dinners in 2011, leaving owner Louis Lanza with only one Upper West Side location—Josie’s West. And now it appears that Mr. Lanza is downsizing his neighborhood housing as well.
Mr. Lanza has sold his penthouse spread at The Fitzgerald for $3.32 million, city records show.
But he’s not moving out just yet. Mr. Lanza owned quite a cut of real estate at 201 West 74th Street—not only the three-unit penthouse combo, but also another, separate unit in the building. Some were passed down to Mr. Lanza by his parents, and some he purchased himself. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with knowing what you like.
The units that Mr. Lanza is parting with have been combined to form a 2,000-square foot corner spread, with three bedrooms and a 625-square foot outdoor space. And while West 74th Street is not located in a particularly hip location, the apartment does have a certain downtown style, boasting a sleek, modern white kitchen and “stunning South American Artisan Ipe wood floors throughout with complementary teak paneling,” according to the listing. It also includes amenities like an in-unit washer/dryer and through-wall air conditioning units—not always a given in pre-war buildings.
Buyers Michael Lennon and Dara Altman were apparently quite impressed. The broadcasting bigwigs—Mr. Lennon is a former TV writer and producer, while Ms. Altman is an executive vice president at internet radio company Sirius XM—paid nearly the full $3.35 million ask for the apartment. Halstead broker Louise Phillips Forbes said that the condo was quite a hot commodity, setting off a bidding battle, with bids up to $150,000 more than the final accepted offer.
At least Mr. Lennon and Ms. Altman will probably get better use out of the state-of-the-art professional chef-designed kitchen with awesome custom-built wet bar than Mr. Lanza. While the eatery-owner undoubtedly knew his way around a kitchen, we can’t imagine he had much cause to use it.
The number of units combined to make up the apartment is surpassed only by the number of brokers who worked to sell it—Ms. Forbes shared the listing with her Halstead colleagues Jason Miller, Richard Johnson and Jonathan Schulz. Given the closing price, we’d say that the number of cooks in this kitchen was just right.
