Here at the NY Condo Blog we consider 15 CPW to be the best condo project to rise in Manhattan in a very long time.  We rated it #1 on our top 100 condos list and believe it could be decades before a project of this magnitude hits the market again.  We’d like to thank Adam Bonislawski for mentioning our blog last Sunday in the print edition of the New York Post.  So why am I doing another post about this building, even though it sold out and closings are well underway?  The Real Deal did such a great story on the building this month, tracking over 80 buyers who have already closed, that we had to reitereate some highlights from that story.

Clearly the resident roster boasts some uber-exclusive names.  Included in that list are almost 10 current and former Goldman Sachs employees.  The explanation for this, besides those insanely large bonuses we read about each year, is that developer Zeckendorf partnered with Goldman’s Whitehall Street Real Estate Funds to raise money for the project.  The relationship likely resulted in a certain awareness of what a valuable investment opportunity this property would ultimately become.  I’m sure many of these people bought in 2005 and 2006, and are now realizing a 50-100% return on their investment.  Who else bought?  Following the theme of financial powerhouses, Sandy & Joan Weill bought two units in the building a few months ago, representing some of the last sales before the project sold out.  One of Weill’s units is a penthouse in the smaller ’house’ tower of the building.  It happens to have the most outdoor space of any unit in the building.  Real estate brokers bought in the building as well including the famous Bobby Browne of Corcoran Group ($2.7M 2-bed) and Dorothy Somekh, a senior vice president at Halstead.  Dorothy actually bought the apartment directly above Sandy & Joan Weill’s smaller 6th floor apartment.  These broker purchases strike as brilliant business moves in addition to personal investments.  If Brown or Somekh can cuddle up with hundreds of millionaire buyers, they are destined to get referrals and make more huge commissions in the future. 

Everybody has been talking about Bob Costas’s purchase in the building.  Even though he dropped $10.8M, he’s only on the 8th floor of the building.  Fortunately, he chose a C-line which has direct park exposures.  Remember, the development has a ‘house’ section which is about 20 stories, and then the ‘tower’ section which rises another 23 stories up.  Other C-line purchasers include Jeff Gordon, the famous NASCAR driver who bought apartment 7C directly under Mr. Costas.  Unit 12C went to Richard Cantor, a former financial powerhouse who is now active in the New York elite scene.  His wife Pam, 15 years younger, is a distinguished psychiatrist.

The D-line in the tower section of the building is a corner layout which clears the lower tower and has dramatic views.  These fetched some of the highest prices in the building and went to distinguished buyers including Steven Hoffman of Millennium Partners, Alan Shuch (another Goldman guy), Zachary Schreiber, yet another financial guru, and political cartoonist Ranan Lurie. 

Some of the very most expensive units in the building went to Google exec Omid Kordestani, who dropped $30M on his unit and George Meng, an import-export powerhouse and survivor of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  Meng bought apartment 37D for about $12M, now probably worth twice that.  Penthouse 39 went to Danile Loeb, a wealthy hedge fund manager but not the richest guy in the building by any means. 

This list only covers a handful of the buyers.  As closings continue to happen, we will continue to get public records filed with the city with information about the purchasers.   For now, we have a condo building which is easily the most succesful project of my lifetime.  Thank you Real Deal for running this great story which inspired my post.

James

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 7:42 pm and is filed under Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.