I almost forgot to offer my eye candy of the month!
This week I’ll review two eye-poppers, 30 Park Place and the Puck Penthouses.
They are both incredible and geared to the tippy top of the market.
30 Park Place looking North
A lot of press went out this past week about 432 Park topping out, at 1396 feet.
30 Park is working to accomplish a similar impact of height, at about 900 feet, while the Puck Building, at the corner of Lafayette and Houston, is all about what they’ve been able to accomplish in a 125 year-old shell.
They are
similar in the level at which they deliver but, in my view, are geared to utterly different buyers.
First, 30 Park Place.
Classically-Styled Bath
Larry Silverstein’s latest addition to the skyline is a lovely Robert M. Stern build-out.
Lap of luxury, posh, swimming in gracious details.
This project is already 50% sold.
Four Seasons Hotel downstairs, private residences above, steps from the new PATH and World Trade Center Transit hub.
Millions of square feet of retail to the South, where Tribeca meets the Financial district, all poised to be massively successful retail, and quaint to the North.
It adds up for me.
30 Park Place Kitchen
Add in the quality of finishes, the ceiling heights, the amenity level, hotel access to room service, lots and lots of staff: this has the potential to appeal to foreign, domestic, Uptown buyers, Downtown folks, etc.
The downside would be if someone
were looking for a more contemporary look, as this is in keeping with the traditional and transitional.
It is GORGEOUS, but not inventing a new wheel.
But that’s really it.
And the market seems to be speaking for a new development version of a privately done renovation.
That is, what a person might put in a one-off design.
Perhaps the pendulum will swing the other way, but not in this project, or
in the Puck Penthouses.
The Puck Penthouses have redone their staging, providing an even nicer dressing on top of Jose Ramirez’s interior design, but they haven’t released the new photos yet.
I saw the new staging and took photos I’m not allowed to share yet!
All of the apartments are completely built out and stunning.
Barrel-vaulted ceilings, La Cornue stoves, Wolf convection ovens, each master bedroom with a his-and-hers private bath and walk-in closet, fully pre-wired for a/v, and a proportion befitting the name Penthouse in each and every apartment.
Jaw-dropping, powerful, very special.
The new staging looks even better.
Here’s the penthouse floorplan. Enjoy.
With everything that is magical and incredible about these spaces, they do have nice views to the North from the Penthouse and any open Northern or Eastern exposure, but much of many apartments face either the parapets of the building itself or the neighboring buildings, or don’t clear enough to have a meaningfully open view.
So there seems to be a little bit of a view issue. The $66mm (that’s $66,000,000) Penthouse master bedroom has only an open view to the North.
A typical kitchen: anything but
But more than that, what seems odd, and what I struggle with, is about who the buyer might be for these units.
For some reason I keep thinking about the 2002 Sam Raimi Spider Man movies as I’m walking through them.
There’s a masculine quality, a Gotham feeling that I can’t shake.
The apartment used in the Spiderman movies as Green Goblin’s lair – in reality, Tudor City on East 42nd Street
These are massive apartments that appear to be designed for families, fitted out with incredibly high end layouts and finishes one sees in Uptown units in traditional Park Avenue cooperatives.
Also, these are the layouts that we are also seeing at 30 Park Place, though perhaps on Steroids.
There should be more secret panels, magic that you might see in a castle!
But, then, it seems like a Downtown buyer might be more inclined to look at 30 Park Place because of the location in Tribeca or because of the views.
Or the price.
Or to look to the West Village for a little more quiet.
So who are the industrialists like the Green Goblin’s Osbourne, who are more keen on being at Lafayette and Houston than on the Upper East Side?
Or in
Tribeca?
The level of service can be high, of course,
but with so few units, it is
most definitely more boutique in every way.
So I guess I’m having trouble seeing the end user.
They don’t need to find too many buyers, so let’s assume this is on the tour
from the $80mm units at 432 and One57, down to the West Village to see some $40mm penthouses, then over to Puck to see this one.
It should be an interesting few months in Downtown real estate sales.