Strauss-Kahn rejected by the Upper East Side, now heading to Lower Manhattan

Scratch that: Dominique Strauss-Kahn won’t be moving into the Upper East Side’s Bristol Plaza when he’s released from Rikers Island on $1 million bail, because once he was outed as the resident-to-be, the management balked.

According to the Post, “someone high-profile in the building” pushed for Strauss-Kahn to be rejected as a tenant after hordes of reporters showed up at 210 East 65th Street today, waiting for the former International Monetary Fund managing director and alleged rapist to show. Strauss-Kahn’s wife, Anne Sinclair, had reportedly rented two apartments at the extended-stay hotel, where rooms go for between $8,800 and $14,200 per month, and had planned to have her husband stay in one of them while he awaited trial.

Yesterday, a judge agreed to let Strauss-Kahn trade his Rikers jail cell for the Bristol Plaza apartment on the condition that he be monitored by an armed guard, video cameras and an electronic ankle bracelet. Strauss-Kahn had been living at Rikers since last Saturday, when he was picked up off an Air France flight moments before it took off and charged with sexually assaulting a chamber maid at Midtown’s Sofitel hotel.

But a court official told the New York Times this afternoon that the Milstein Properties building refused to accept him and that officials at the city’s Department of Correction had scrambled to come up with an alternative, settling on a corporate housing building used by the security company that was hired to oversee Strauss-Kahn’s house arrest, Stroz Friedberg.

Reuters is reporting that Strauss-Kahn is now headed to an unspecified location in Lower Manhattan. When contacted by The Real Deal, Stroz Friedberg declined to comment.

Once considered a front-runner to challenge French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the country’s upcoming election, Strauss-Kahn is due back in court June 6 and is facing up to 25 years in prison. [Post], [NYT], [Reuters]