I first caught Leonard Blavatnik’s name a year ago when I found a city filing for his purchase of unit 4W at 998 Fifth Avenue for $27.5M. 998 Fifth Avenue is a co-op, which we don’t usually discuss on this site, but it’s among the most important co-ops on 5th Avenue. Located on prime 81st Street, it first opened in 1912 by famed design firm McKim, Mead, & White. Nice place to live, right? Not enough for Len.

Sources reveal that his grand plans to have a bigger and better apartment at 998 5th (he tried to buy the floor below) failed. His expansion plans were also rejected at 927 5th Avenue and The San Remo, buildings which recently rejected Billy Joel, and Madonna. Can I ask a silly question? Why did it take so long for such as educated man (Harvard) to realize that New York co-ops are not friendly about major structural alterations, nor or they impressed by the billion dollar bragging right. It must have finally kicked in because the $150,000,000 unit he ultimately decided this weekend was a condominium. Not just any condominium—several floors at the famous Mark Hotel condo conversion on 77th Street and Madison Avenue. The offer beat out other recent impressive condominium purchases such as Harry Macklowe’s $60M penthouse at the Plaza and Daniel Loeb’s incredible penthouse purchase at 15 Central Park West. But a move from 5th Avenue to Madison? Some might call that a defeat for Blavatnik. Maybe not, 30,000 feet of prime Carnegie Hill space would probably satisify most New York apartment owners.

In case he gets bored, Blavatnik owns a few other apartments including townhouses on 63rd and 64th Streets, an estate in East Hampton, and a mansion in London. Impressive.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 11th, 2007 at 3:28 pm and is filed under NY Condo Blog, Riverhouse Condo - 1 River Terrace. 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.