Platinum condo in Times Square sells out

From left: 247 West 46th Street, comedian Rosie O’Donnell, rapper Pras, and Marketing Directors’ Adrienne Albert

After nearly four years on the market, the 220-unit Platinum condominium is sold out.

The last five units in the Times Square tower, designed by Costas Kondylis, went into contract in March, according to the Marketing Directors, the sales agent for the building.

Units in the 43-story building sold for an average of $1,350 per square foot, said Allen Goldman, president of SJP Residential Properties, the project’s developer.

It’s been a long road for Platinum, located at 247 West 46th Street at Eighth Avenue.

When the project first hit the sales market in 2007, before the Lehman Brothers collapse, the New York City real estate market was in a different place, said Marketing Directors CEO Adrienne Albert. With some units priced up to $7.5 million, the building made a splash with sexy advertisements featuring svelte, half-naked models covered in platinum paint.

“That ad campaign was conceived for the Gordon Gekko-wannabes; it was about power,” Albert recalled. “It was a great campaign — so distinctive.”

But as the recession rocked New York City, buyers’ priorities changed, and the campaign was scrapped.

“The times changed,” Albert said. “As the recession took hold, it wasn’t about power — it was about survival.”

In recent years, marketing efforts at the building focused on value and recruiting international buyers, who were attracted to the building’s location in bustling Times Square, Albert said.

Recently, buyers at the building were offered two round-trip tickets from their home city to New York if they purchased a unit in the building, according to the Platinum website.

“It’s the foreign sales that really got us through the worst part of the recession,” Albert said, adding that buyers in the building hail from France, Italy, Turkey, China, Korea, Venezuela and Mexico.

SJP never officially reduced prices, but the developer was willing to negotiate, Albert said. According to Streeteasy.com, most units in the building sold for 2 to 35 percent off their original asking prices.

Goldman said buyers were attracted to the building’s amenities, including a “recovery zone” with body-massage chairs.

“We were very successful because we delivered a superior product with many hotel-style amenities that proved to be very appealing to a wide variety of buyers,” he said.

Comedian Rosie O’Donnell bought a unit in the building in 2008, but no longer lives there, Albert said. Another celebrity, rapper Pras Michel, of Fugees fame, sued to get out of his $2.46 million contract to buy a two-bedroom unit at the building.