Nicholas Bartha, Arne Jacobsen, and High-End Real-Estate FlippingRemember Dr. Nicholas Bartha, the psychotic Upper East Side doctor who blew up his townhouse with himself in it rather than sell the thing to pay his ex-wife the divorce settlement she was owed? Yeah, well, the Times has a profile today of Janna Bullock, the Russian-born developer who bought the now-empty lot for $8.3 million, plans to build “a Modernist-style house with a green roof and an underground pool” on it, and then, she says, sell the thing, in one to four years, for $30 to $40 million. (A place on East 67th she bought for $10.5 million is now on the market for $35 million.) Our friends at Curbed (we think we’re still friends with them, yes?) are moderately in awe of her flipping talents but even more in awe of her publicity-shot locale: Yes, that’s her, photographed in the empty lot that was once the Bartha house. Us? We’re even more impressed by her photo styling. The dilapidated Arne Jacobsen egg chair she’s sitting in? On the dilapidated lot on which she plans to build a modernist icon? Genius.
Buy High, Sell Higher [NYT via Curbed]
the morning line
Traffic Jam
• The Feds are insistent on their Monday deadline for approval of Bloomberg’s congestion-pricing plan, the mayor says, and Shelly Silver’s Assembly doesn’t even have plans to reconvene to discuss it. Poor Mike. [NYT]