15 Central Park West

Florida developer Gerardo Capo has paid $3.5 million for a 12th-floor condo at 15 Central Park West, city records show, moving about as far from Miami's bottomless housing market as one can get--metaphorically speaking.

The chairman of the Capo Group lives in one of his own luxury condos in Miami Beach, just 48 miles east of one the biggest and most controversial projects in his portfolio, the $850 million Bimini Bay Resort and Casino in the Bahamas. On second thought, maybe he was trying to put a little distance between himself and the Capo Group's adversaries living on the 9.5 million-square-mile island.  read more »

At least a dozen people at 15 Central Park West have thrown out an extra $800,000 or so for a pied a terre for the help to complement their own palatial condos. Penthouse owner Sanford Weil even paid $950,000 for a second unit that we can only assume is a closet since it is not denoted by the S-prefix--supposedly the S stands for "suite," but we can't help but notice that it's also the first letter of the word staff.  read more »

When Joseph Betesh opened an Army-Navy store in the South Bronx in 1975 he probably never imagined he would become a full-fledged hip-hop clothing mogul with 19 branches of his Dr. Jay's store spread across the five boroughs. Now the Sephardic Jewish retailer who made a fortune selling "urban apparel" to 18- to 30- year-olds is moving about as far away from his retail roots as possible.

Mr. Betesh has paid $5.6 million for a 28th-floor condo at 15 Central Park West, city records show.  read more »

Compared to some of the other blue-chip investment banks in the city, Deutsche Bank was not well represented at 15 Central Park West. The lone Deutsche banker with a condo in the tower has been flying solo in a sea of Goldman and Lehman residents since he closed on a $9.9 million unit in February.

It seems he's finally gotten a buddy. Deutsche's Head of Trading for Emerging Market Debt, Kay Haigh, paid $5.3 million for a 24th-floor unit, city records show.  read more »

The first and only woman to gain entry into the 15-member boys club that is the Lehman Brothers’ executive board has now penetrated one of the city’s most exclusive buildings. Erin M. Callan, the recently appointed Lehman CFO, paid $6.5 million for a 31st-floor condo at 15 Central Park West, city records show.  read more »

It's a good year to be a top-notch, shiny-shoe, uptown real estate broker. Less than a year after Sandy Weill finally closed on his $42.4 million penthouse at 15 Central Park West, his agent on the deal has gotten a condo of his own in the multi-billion dollar building.  read more »

American retailers, as a whole, have seen much brighter days. But apparently some in the industry are faring better than others.

The president of New England department store chain Kids Town, Joseph Sutton, has purchased a $2.6 million pad on the 14th floor at 15 Central Park West, city records show, backed by a $1.8 million mortgage.

15 Central Park West has no shortage of accomplished residents. Pick a field and its leader might just have a condo in the building. There are dozens of Wall Street investors who’ve made (and in a few cases) lost billions of dollars, a Nascar star, a pharmaceutical executive, and even English teacher-cum-rockstar Sting.

The latest buyer might be the most dazzling professional hyphenate yet—M.D./Hedge Fund Manager. Dr. Lindsay Rosenwald, a one-time internal physician who made a fortune investing in bio-technology start-ups took out a $22.5 million mortgage to buy a $30 million duplex condominium on the 18th floor, city records show.  read more »

Sting has closed on his condo at 15 Central Park West, city records show. The former English teacher signed the property deed for the $26.5 million, 16th-floor condo with his proper name, Gordon Sumner.

Sting signed the contract to buy the 5,500-square-foot, tower-side duplex with five bedrooms and a terrace nearly two years ago.  read more »

A mogul who made a fortune on portable, personal cooling devices paid $5.4 million for a 26th-floor condo at 15 Central Park West, city records show. Steven Bandawat bought the Arizona-based Misty Mate in 2004 and the company has since become the jewel in the crown of a portfolio that also includes Bromwell Housewares and Michiana Forge. Since then everyone from the U.S. military to the 1996 Summer Olympics have used the company's "misters."

South African gambling and hotel mogul Sol Kerzner has indulged his daughters’ penchant for expensive real estate over the years, gaining a reputation as quite the doting daddy. He bought his daughter Beverly a $10.5 million, 5,845-square-foot penthouse at Philip Johnson’s Urban Glass House two years ago. Just a year later, last September, The Observer's Max Abelson reported that the heiress paid $8.35 million for a colossal basketball court-turned-triplex at 213 West 23rd Street.  read more »

Laura Blankfein, the wife of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, paid $701,000 for Suite 807 ("suite" being the euphemism for a staff apartment) at 15 Central Park West, city records show.

The Observer's Max Abelson reported that the Blankfeins closed on a 16th-floor duplex condo in the building back in January when the extent of the subprime mortgage crisis' impact on Wall Street was finally becoming clear. The couple signed the contract for the yet-to-be built apartment two days before Mr. Blankfein was promoted to CEO at Goldman in May 2006, at the height of the Manhattan real estate market.

Since then, the national market has tanked and New York's is stagnant. But while other Wall Street banking firms are writing down their balance sheets as quickly as they once did year-end bonus checks, Goldman Sachs, with Mr. Blankfein at the helm, has remained largely unscathed.  read more »

Gary Jortner, executive vice president of corporate affairs at Pfizer, has bought what we can only assume is a pied a terre at 15 Central Park West given its relatively modest price tag of $2.48 million, city records show. Mr. Jortner and his wife Cindy live in Rye, according to the property deed.

One of the most successful Big Pharma firms, Pfizer has been slagging lately. In January, it announced plans to cut 10,000 jobs and close five plants in the U.S.  read more »

Mikhail Segal, the director of Dynegy, the third-largest independent power production company in the U.S., has paid $12.95 million for a 38th-floor unit at 15 Central Park West, city records show. Last week we reported that Mr.  read more »

A pair of condos at 15 Central Park West have sold, city records show. A buyer listed as Jay Investments LLC paid $20.5 million for Unit 11A. A few minutes later, a $15.6 million condo sale popped up in city records.

The second deed lists a pair of LLC's, G-Ike Management and L-Stone Management, as the buyers of Unit 15C. Both of the companies are registered to the same North Carolina address as a senior vice president at Capital Research and Management, Greg Ireland, and wife Lori. The firm is the largest Yahoo shareholder according to Portfolio magazine, so perhaps Mr. Ireland bought the swanky new apartment in anticipation of Microsoft's possible purchase (or takeover) of Yahoo.

The same lawyer filed both deeds, but he was out of the office when we tried to verify the buyers' identities.

Back in January, we reported that the owner of the upscale travel agency Smart Flyer had bought a $4.86 million condo at 15 Central Park West. Less than two months later, Spanx CEO Sara Blakely and former rapper and Marquis Jet founder Jessie Itzler (a.k.a. 1991 one-hit-wonder Jesse Jaymes), have paid Mr. Holtz $8.5 million for the 14th-floor condo, city records show. After turning a nearly $4 million profit, Mr. Holtz must only be thinking "Spank!"

Mr.  read more »

Mikhail Segal, the director of Dynegy, the third largest independent power production company in the U.S., has bought a $1 million "suite" at 15 Central Park West, according to city records.

Mr. Segal worked at the Department of Energy in the former Soviet Union and went on to found LS Power Group in 1990. In 2006, LS Power Group's assets were acquired by Dynegy for $2 billion.

Tech mogul Omid Kordestani has bought a $30 million condo at 15 Central Park West today, according to city records. Mr. Kordestani is the senior vice president of Global Sales and Business Development at Google and was the 189th richest man in America in 2006, according to Forbes' annual survey.

An unknown buyer has paid $11.77 million for Unit 9B at 15 Central Park West, according to city records. The same buyer purchased a $720,000 "suite"--the euphemism for staff accomodations at the building--on Feb. 22. Though we couldn't confirm the identity of the buyer, one of the names listed on the deed was Queens College graduate Betty Lau, the CEO of technology firm Applied Info. Partners.

Drs. Evelyn and Amarga Segundo have bought a $3.4 million condo at 15 Central Park West, city records show. The couple live in Plandome in Nassau County, according to the deed; and have separate medical practices in Ozone Park and Jackson Heights in Queens. As far as we know they are the first practicing medical doctors to move into the Zeckendorf-developed building.

The former chairman and CEO of the pharmaceutical giant Merck, Roy P. Vagelos, has bought a $21 million condo at 15 Central Park West, city records today show.

At Merck until 1994, Mr. Vagelos was largely credited with shepherding the firm through its pre-Vioxx golden years. Since his departure, Merck has been rocked by a series of high-profile scandals, most notably its recall of its best-selling arthritis drug Vioxx after a study revealed it caused heart attacks.  read more »

A Madrid-based Internet company called the Aitana Corporation has paid $11.4 million for an 11th-floor condo at 15 Central Park West, according to city records. We're hunting for more details about the buyer.

Just one week after paying $11 million for a sixth-floor condo at 15 Central Park West, the founding partner of the Canyon Capital consulting firm, Josh Friedman, has closed on an $810,000 unit there as well, according to city records filed today. It's presumably one of the 29 maids' suites on the lower floors of the building, and he bought it through a family trust, records show.

Mr. Friedman used to work in mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs so he will have plenty of former colleagues as new neighbors.  read more »

The manager of technology firm Accenture, George Logothetis, has paid $12.9 million for a condo at 15 Central Park West, according to city records. In December, Mr. Logothetis sold three condos on the 53rd floor of the Millenium Tower building just a few blocks away for $15.1 million.

Daniel Loeb, the hedge-fund manager known for his gloriously acidic put-downs ("We are a bunch of scrappy guys... who enjoy outwitting pompous asses, like yourself, in financial markets globally," he wrote a would-be employee in 2005), might be lightening up. According to real estate records filed on Friday, he's finally closed on his famous $45 million penthouse at 15 Central Park West--which he bought using a cute little limited liability corporation called Panoroma on the Park.  read more »

The head of commodities research at Deutsche Bank London, Michael Lewis, has bought a $10 million condo at 15 Central Park West, according to city records.

Political cartoonist Ranan Lurie and his Greenwich, Conn., power-broker wife Tamar have closed on an $11.45 million condo at 15 Central Park West, according to city records. Max Abelson broke the news of the sale on Jan. 8. Mr. Lurie back then told The Observer he looked foward to having one of the Google co-founders as his next-door neighbor.

“When you want to know how many people in Oshkosh, you poor people have to go open your computer and everything.  read more »

Another 15 Central Park West condo has sold for $8.75 million, according to city records. The deed lists the buyer of Unit 30D as LBI Capital LLC. We're hunting more info.

Rodney O. Martin, the chief operating officer of insurance behemoth AIG, has bought Unit 3B in 15 Central Park West for $8.1 million, according to a deed filed with the city.

Also, a deed shows that Anne M. White paid $13.1 million for Unit 32D in the new condo building.

So many Goldman Sachs bankers snapped up condos at 15 Central Park West in January that you would think they got coupons from the Zeckendorff brothers who developed it.

Goldman Sachs partner Donald C. Opatrny closed on an $11.8 million condo at 15 Central Park West, according to a city record filed Tuesday, making him the fifth Goldman banker to buy an apartment in the building in the past month.  read more »

Zachary Jared Schreiber and wife Lori bought Unit 33D at 15 Central Park West for over $11 million, according to city records filed today.

Mr. Schreiber donated $2,300 to Barak Obama's presidential campaign this year, and he was listed on the filing for that donation as a portfolio manager for Duquense Capital.  read more »

When Lloyd and Laura Blankfein signed their $26 million contract for a 16th-floor duplex at the not-yet-built 15 Central Park West mega-condo in May 2006, they probably knew that they wouldn't be closing until 2008.

But they couldn't have known how much different their world would be: Two days after signing the contract, Mr. Blankfein was made CEO at Goldman Sachs; about 13 months later, Wall Street began to cower and quake as the sub-prime mortgages sent the market downward.  read more »

Unit 8B in Fifteen Central Park West has sold for $10.8 million, according to city deeds. The deed lists the buyer as only Victory East LLC, but the same LLC sold a $14.4 million penthouse in another star-studeed Manhattan building, One Beacon Court, to Broadway power couple Ron and Susan Frankel last October.

Come check out the latest technology by ... Liz Claiborne?

Indeed! Chic leather handbags with removable laptop sleeves are the first items on display when you stroll down the blue-carpeted entranceway to the city's freshest Best Buy, which held its blue-and-gold-balloon-strewn grand opening on Friday at Fifteen Central Park West.

A day earlier, the retailer even held a fashion show, with an appearance by design diva Tim Gunn of Project Runway fame.

Yes, the home of the Geek Squad has gone slightly more upscale at its new Columbus Circle location. After all, who in this ritzy neighborhood wants the common Targus tote when you can get something more fashionable, say, a cute floral-patterned laptop bag by Sigrid Olsen? (Just $199.99!)

The spacious three-level location also features two swank sound-proof booths so Upper West Side shoppers can crank up the Michael Buble on titanium horn-loaded tweeters as high as 75 decibels without disturbing the sleeping billionaires in the pricey condos upstairs.

"No other store in the city has one," asserted Luiz, one of many overly friendly, earpiece-equipped employees, who seemingly outnumbered customers by about 2 to 1 on this particular afternoon.

He also pointed to the "trippy" strip of soft blue lighting in the ceiling as another amenity exclusive to the new location.

The first sale at Fifteen Central Park West is official.

Unit 7C has closed for $9.67 million, according to city records. The buyer, listed as Carolina Real Property LLC, took its time closing. The deal went to contract back in September 2005 and did not close until just a few weeks ago. The true identity of the buyer could not immediately be determined, but we're guessing it may be NASCAR star Jeff Gordon, who has lived in North Carolina and who is known to have been an early buyer at the condo.

Fifteen Central Park West is one of the most anticipated new developments in recent city history. Developed by Arthur and William Lie Zeckendorf, the two-tower spread with 201 condos should record nearly $2 billion in sales when all is said and done.

Over the past two years, several notables besides Mr. Gordon have gone to contract for the spreads that average over $3,000 a square foot, including hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, who went to contract on a penthouse in November 2005 for a then-record $45 million. Other buyers in the Robert A.M. Stern-designed condo include musician Sting and his wife Trudie Styler, sportscaster Bob Costas, director Norman Lear, and actor Denzel Washington.  read more »