Beyoncé’s Searching for a New Sasha FierceAll that practicing you’ve done in your room is going to pay off! The singer is looking for the person with the best rendition of the dance from “Single Ladies.”
The Plaza Fights Back Against Andrei VavilovNow El-Ad, the developers behind the new Plaza hotel, are suing the Russian financier over his ‘defamatory’ complaints about his penthouse apartment.
Charlie Gibson’s ‘World News’ Reaches an All-Time LowBut it WAS over the holiday weekend, so we forgive him. Plus, another dude climbs the ‘Times’ building, Lehman considers Jersey, the Plaza has a big flip, and summer associates get down on their knees, in our daily industry report.
Anne Hathaway’s Humiliation Will Go OnThe beloved actress has an interview coming out in the next ‘In Style’ in which she gushes over her disgraced ex-boyfriend Raffaello Follieri. That, and the rest of today’s gossip in our daily column roundup.
Inside an Apartment in the New PlazaNew York’s real-estate writer S. Jhoanna Robledo recently toured an apartment in the newly renovated Plaza, and our cameras went along. Once the crown jewel of New York hotels, the Plaza went condo in 2005, and its permanent residents enjoy all the amenities of hotel living. This two-bedroom rental is only $16,500 a month, and comes with a mosaic-tile bathroom and maid service. And if you want a drink, the Oak Bar is right downstairs.
Video: Inside the Plaza
white men with money
Jimmy Cayne Closes on Sweet Plaza PadFormer Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne is apparently feeling pretty mellow about the fact that Bear Stearns stock is at an all-time low; the 74-year-old bridge-master and alleged pothead and his wife, Patricia, just closed on not one but two adjacent apartments at the Plaza for $28.24 million. Altogether, they’ll have 6,000 square feet, plus room service, maid service, and unparalleled views of Central Park. Yeah. And if you think that sounds sick, you should check it out after a few hits of the Purple Haze. Neighbors include foundering real-estate developer Harry Macklowe, Tommy Hilfiger, and a noted egg lover Joanna Cutler. Which reminds us: Cayne might want to be careful when he’s all stoned up and taking out the garbage. We hear that the trash room on that floor can be kind of a bad trip.
Posh Plaza Purchase [PageSix.com]
Earlier: Joanna Cutler Reunited With Egg After Horrifying Ordeal
in other news
Real-Estate Broker Joanna Cutler Reunited With Egg After Horrifying OrdealYou won’t believe what happened to top real-estate broker Joanna Cutler! She went through a horrific ordeal! The other night, Joanna went to deposit her trash in the trash room on the fourteenth floor of the Plaza, where she lives, when all of a sudden the door slammed shut behind her and there she was, stranded all alone with a bunch of dirty Lean Cuisine cartons and empty bottles of Chardonnay. She shoved at the door, she told the Post, but it wouldn’t budge. “Then I started using my feet on the door, then banged with my hands, my back, and my butt.… I kept trying to free up whatever was jamming the door with the tips of my fingers. I was trying to slip them underneath the door, but something sharp cut them,” she said. She screamed, but no one heard her. She was alone. But that wasn’t the worst part. No. The worst part, the part that Joanna could not bear, was knowing that she was separated from her Fabergé egg and thinking that she may never see it again, since she had left her apartment door open and thus feared the robbers might come. Joanna loves her Fabergé egg, as you can glean from the photo above; loves it even more, probably, than Astrakhan vests, Versace throw pillows, and the smell of Christian Dior’s Poison. In fact, no one knows this, but she has secretly named the egg Karl. During the seven hours that she stayed awake in what the Post calls her “dank hell,” it was the thought of Karl that kept her alive, until at last a building worker heard her screams and let her out, blinking, into the light.
Horror Night at the Plaza [NYP]
neighborhood watch
The Plaza Will Soon Let You Throw Money at It AgainGowanus: The Gowanus Village is on the market for $27 million, and Curbed has a photo gallery, including shots of the “beautiful canal waterfront.” [Brownstoner]
Lower Manhattan: Today is the fifteenth anniversary of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The visitor center down there will have a public program at 7 p.m. in remembrance. [WTC Visitor’s Center]
Midtown: The Plaza’s final opening date is scheduled for March 1. It starts at only $1,000 a night. But that comes with wireless! [NYT]
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Stribling’s Luxury Report Says That Triplex on Fifth Isn’t Getting Any CheaperStribling’s Luxury Market report has bad news for buyers, at least if you’re the type who needs three bedrooms and a library on Park. Prices aren’t expected to drop anytime soon, says Kirk Henckels, director of Stribling Private Brokerage (the luxe firm’s ultraluxe arm), who spoke to us today. Already, there have been four closed sales above $20 million this year — writer Georgia Shreve’s duplex penthouse at 1060 Fifth Avenue that sold for $46 million is one of the more memorable deals, given that it still needs work. And nine more blockbusters are in the offing. (Last year, we had eleven total!) “We’re already ahead of pace,” Henckels says. The under–$20 million market’s also percolating. “There’s just so little [available]. One came on yesterday, and it’s priced significantly higher than one across the street that went for $17 million last year — and it won’t last long.” Why all the action, despite continued ambivalence about the economy’s future? Though some buyers, spooked by talks of a slowdown, may have left the game, plenty are still on the lookout for their next mansion, Henckels says.
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This Just In: Manhattan Still Expensive!Some of the city’s biggest brokerage firms released their fourth-quarter reports on the Manhattan real-estate market this week. And the news? Holdouts hoping for a slump won’t get their reward quite yet. The breakdown:
• While other cities sink into subprime hell, the borough remains stubbornly bullish, buoyed in part by tight inventory, especially in co-ops. If you’re still looking to buy, an apartment in the borough will set you back an average of nearly $1.44 million, 18 percent more than what you would’ve paid the year before. (That’s according to valuations guru Jonathan Miller’s Prudential Douglas Elliman survey; Halstead and Brown Harris Stevens’ numbers come in slightly under at $1.43 million.)
• Prices were up pretty much across the board, with large spaces being the most in demand. (No surprise, they saw the most gains; according to Miller, three-bedrooms spiked an impressive 39.8 percent in value over the same period the previous year.)
Who Do You Like?As Indian summer continued its extended run last week, some of the most popular kids in town found themselves getting the cold shoulder. A federal lawsuit charged Bloomberg LP discriminates against pregnant women, and BMOC Mike Bloomberg promptly reminded us that he no longer runs his namesake company. (Later in the week, a little red in the face, he admitted he regularly talks to senior executives there.) Onetime Most Likely to Succeed Barack Obama fell 33 points behind Hillary Clinton in the latest presidential poll.
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Fireworks, Cake, Paul Anka: Nothing at the Plaza Could Heal Matthew Broderick’s PainThe Plaza Hotel’s 100th anniversary last night ought to have been a joyous celebration. The Orchestra of St. Luke’s played a forties-Hollywood soundtrack. Yitzhak Tshuva, the Israeli mogul who turned the hotel into condos, smiled and laughed among some 200 family members and his favorite singer, Paul Anka. Gucci brought really cool fireworks — they even shot rockets off the roof of the building — and a twelve-foot, one-ton Ron Ben-Israel cake in the building’s image was admired and then eaten. And it was good. And yet, Matthew Broderick, there to toast the happy occasion, could barely contain his sorrow.
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What High-End Market Trouble? Plaza’s Versace Units Snapped Up
Not worried by mortgage-market meltdown or stock-market volatility or spiking rates on jumbo mortgages? Still looking for a prime place to park your millions? We’ve got some bad news, then: The Plaza is nearly sold out. Indeed, even the two much-photographed, Donatella Versace–designed model apartments — dubbed “white” and “black” for their dominant color schemes and used by the building’s hotel-to-condo redevelopers to attract potential purchasers — have been snapped up, a Plaza source told us today. The 1,212-square-foot one-bedroom unit, which faces Central Park, fetched $6.9 million, while the 2,656-square-foot two-bedroom, with both park and western views, went for $12.5. (Neither of those prices includes the Versace trimmings, which would have cost who knows how much more.) But don’t give up yet, highfliers determined to live in a converted hotel space. The Pierre penthouse is still on the market, for a mere $70 million. —S. Jhoanna Robledo
in other news
A Brief Thought on Manhattan Real EstateA contract has been signed for what will be the most expensive apartment sale in New York City history, according to today’s Times. A “London-based businessman in the oil business” — for shame, local hedgies! — will pay $56 million for a triplex penthouse in the converted-to-condos Plaza Hotel. It occurs to us: With that same $56 million, by way of comparison, you could lease 100 Manhattan one-bedrooms — Citi Habitats puts the current average monthly one-bedroom rent at $2,567 — for a bit more than eighteen years. That’s all.
Triplex Penthouse at the Plaza Hotel Set to Sell for $56 Million [NYT]
