Harrison Ford’s 206 West 17th Street apartment, John Madden’s 1 West 72nd Street apartment and Billy Joel’s Sagaponack home

Few things add to the cachet of a residential listing better than a recognizable owner, and Forbes gathered a list of the biggest stars whose homes are on the market. Harrison Ford’s $16 million Chelsea penthouse, John Madden’s Upper West Side apartment and Billy Joel’s Sagaponack oceanfront property each made the list (see photos above).

Ford, who starred in the original ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Indiana Jones’ series and spends most of his time in his Wyoming home, is listing his 5,664-square-foot apartment with a private roof deck at 206 West 17th Street for $16 million with Deborah Grubman and David Dubin of the Corcoran Group.
[more]

Jan-Dirk Paarlberg, the Dutch investor who was convicted of fraud, forgery and money laundering in the Netherlands last year, has unloaded his two-bedroom apartment at the Dakota for $4.6 million, as he continues his battle to stay out of prison.
The six-room co-op at 1 West 72nd Street, which has views of Central Park as well as 14-foot ceilings and comes with a studio on the ninth floor, was one of several residences Paarlberg owned worldwide before he was found guilty of participating in a $23.5 million extortion scheme.

The buyer, public records show, is Bettina Caiola, the widow of New York property owner and Ferrari enthusiast Benny Caiola, who died last year. 
According to previous reports by the Wall Street Journal, Dutch authorities seized Paarlberg’s properties in the Netherlands, Portugal, France and the Netherlands Antilles, and obtained a restraining order from a federal judge in Manhattan last year that prohibited him from selling the Dakota unit without court approval. [more]

John Madden, the interior of his Dakota apartment, and the private entrance off of the interior courtyard

Hall of Fame football coach-turned-legendary sports commentator John Madden has put the 2,000-square-foot co-op he owns at the Dakota on the market for $4.9 million. According to the Wall Street Journal, Madden, who now lives primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area, purchased the five-room apartment for $625,000 in 1985, from comedian Gilda Radner, who had paid just $150,000 for it during the late 1970s. The Central Park West maisonette, at 72nd Street, has original moldings, two fireplaces and a rare, private entrance off of the storied building’s interior courtyard. [more]

While the racial bias suit at the Dakota, filed against the tony Upper West Side building’s co-op board early last month, has drawn its share of controversy, it’s also peeled back the curtain on the building’s more eccentric policies, according to the New York Times. The suit, which accuses the co-op board at 1 West 72nd Street of discriminating against building applicants on the basis of race, has led to a body of paperwork detailing the co-op’s rules, including the barring of “domestic employees, messengers and trades people” from service elevators. Also in the rules is a stipulation barring tenants from giving “dance, vocal or instrumental instruction in his or her apartment at any time” and a mandate that “chauffeur-driven vehicles are not allowed to wait in the driveway.” [NYT]

Alphonse Fletcher and the Dakota (Fletcher photo source: NYT)

In a rare move, the co-op board of the Upper West Side’s famed Dakota has fired back at a former president who alleged racial discrimination by releasing financial documents detailing the reasons behind why he was rejected from buying another apartment in the building. According to the New York Times, the board filed a 237-page response in State Supreme Court yesterday to a suit filed by former president and money manager Alphonse Fletcher earlier this month. Fletcher, who still owns three apartments in the building, including one that he bought for his mother in 2001, had claimed that the board barred him from buying a fourth, $5.7 million unit because of his race, citing previous instances of board prejudice he’d observed against actor Antonio Banderas and singer Roberta Flack. [more]

A two-bedroom apartment at the Dakota has become a central element of an international criminal case, according to the Wall Street Journal. The unit at the tony Upper West Side co-op at 1 West 72nd Street is one of several properties worldwide owned by Jan-Dirk Paarlberg, a Dutch investor who faces four-and-a-half years behind bars after being convicted on fraud, forgery and money laundering charges. But while the home on the corner of Central Park West, which Paarlberg bought in 2001, is now in contract for $4.4 million, Dutch prosecutors claim they have rights to the apartment. [more]

Alphonse Fletcher and the Dakota (Fletcher photo source: NYT)

The co-op board at famed Upper West Side building the Dakota has responded to a lawsuit this week alleging racial discrimination and defamation, according to Gothamist, calling the accusations erroneous. The suit, filed by former board president Alphonse Fletcher, accused the board at One West 72nd Street of using racial slurs during approval hearings and denying some applicants based on their race. A statement from the co-op board said that the suit, which Fletcher brought forward after his request to purchase an additional Dakota unit was denied, holds no merit. [more]

Alphonse Fletcher and the Dakota (Fletcher photo source: NYT)

A former co-op board president and current resident at the Dakota, the tony Upper West Side building at 1 West 72nd Street on the corner of Central Park West where celebrities like Lauren Bacall and John Lennon have lived, is suing the building for racial discrimination, according to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The suit has revealed instances of alleged blatant racism on the part of the co-op board, in which board members allegedly referred to some applicants using racial slurs during the hush-hush board approval process. The complainant, Alphonse Fletcher Jr., claims in the suit that the board referred to one couple as members of a “Jewish mafia,” and says that co-op members suggested that a Hispanic applicant, who had applied for a first-floor apartment, was interested in the ground-floor unit because it gave him closer proximity to street drugs. [more]

Yoko Ono and the Dakota
A Korean tourist waltzed into the usually tightly-secured Dakota through its service entrance last week to snap a few photos from the roof of John Lennon’s old haunt and was only caught after running into Yoko Ono herself while he rode the elevator down. According to the Post, Ono was merely startled by the incident, but residents are furious at the security breach. “They may fire the managing agent,” a source told the paper. (Douglas Elliman Property Management declined to comment). Another noted that Ono and Lennon, who was killed outside the building in 1980, are “the whole reason they have heightened security there, more than any other building.” Comments

One of the Dakota’s largest apartments, a four-bedroom corner unit, has entered contract, according to the Observer, after almost two years of languishing on the market. Although it’s not immediately clear was the contract price was, the unit’s latest asking price was $12.5 million, an almost 50 percent drop from its original asking price. [more]