From left: Karl Lagerfeld and the interior of his 50 Gramercy Park North apartment
The Gramercy Park Hotel apartment belonging to Karl Lagerfeld has hit the market again, for $5.2 million, Curbed reported. The 2,151-square-foot digs, located at 50 Gramercy Park North on the corner of Lexington Avenue, has three bedrooms, three bathrooms and one half-bathroom. [more]
Former “Friends” star Jennifer Aniston has shelled out close to $9 million on a massive three-bedroom Gramercy Park apartment, according to Life & Style magazine, despite purchasing hair stylist Sally Herschberger’s former penthouse and another adjoining apartment at 299 West 12th Street earlier this year.
Aniston and new love interest Justin Theroux have been living at the West 12th Street duplex, but needed extra space as they are considering a family, Life & Style said.
As The Real Deal previously reported, Aniston was spotted checking out the apartment at 50 Gramercy Park North in August. If she really has purchased in the building, she would have received a key to the private Gramercy Park.
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The Real Deal got word that Jennifer Aniston’s Manhattan house hunt continues, and her latest stop was 50 Gramercy Park North. We also ran into TV crews from “Selling New York” while checking out an open house at 83 Franklin Street in Tribeca, where the building’s loft-style, 2,000-square-foot units are commanding near five-figures per month. 
And we sat down for lunch with the Brooklyn Historical Society, where some of the borough’s big-name developers updated their latest projects. Click here for more from The Real Deal on the town. – Katherine Clarke, Adam Fusfeld and Sarabeth Sanders
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Jon Asgeir Johannesson and 50 Gramercy Park NorthIcelandic businessman Jon Asgeir Johannesson — a retail tycoon accused of allegedly raiding the Glitnir bank for more than $2 billion — has sold his 4,235-square-foot penthouse at 50 Gramercy Park North for $22 million, after two years on the market, the Observer reported. According to city records, Mynni Ehf — Icelandic for “Mouth Ltd.” — is the buyer and the deed was signed by Eyjólfur Gunnarsson, an investor. The three-bedroom, three-bathroom duplex was designed by minimalist British architect John Pawson, according to listing brokers Tim Cass and Trisha Lawton of the Corcoran Group. Johannesson purchased the two units, one in April and one in May of 2007, for $14 million. [NYO] [more]
Fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld is planning to sell off the 50 Gramercy Park North co-op he once hoped to retire in for more than $1 million below the price he paid for it five years ago. According to the Post, the Chanel and Fendi designer, a pal of building developer Ian Schrager from their Studio 54 days, paid $6.575 million for the three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom apartment in 2006 but never moved in. He has now enlisted the Corcoran Group’s Wendy Sarasohn to help sell the sixth-floor abode for $5.5 million. Comments
Creditors of failed Icelandic bank Glitnir have subpoenaed the co-op
board of 50 Gramercy Park North to get a hold of the financial records
of alleged fraudster Jon Asgeir Johannesson,
a retail tycoon accused of raiding the bank for more than $2 billion,
the Post reported. Johannesson owns a penthouse in the Ian
Schrager-designed building for which he paid $14.2 million in 2007, and
on which he is said to have recently paid off a $10 million mortgage.
As The Real Deal reported in May, Glitnir filed a lawsuit
against him in Manhattan state court, charging that Johannesson looted
the bank in 2007 and 2008 in order to prop up his own struggling
company. The bank also won an order from a London court to freeze his
assets, including the Gramercy Park North penthouse and a nearby $10.3
million co-op at 2 Lexington Avenue. Because the bank officials
couldn’t find any assets in Iceland, they are looking to the co-op
board for answers about his other New York assets and bank accounts.
“You can bet the co-op board’s requirements on disclosure and
collateral have been a lot tighter than those of the Icelandic banking
system,” a source said. It’s not the first time Johannesson has run
into trouble at the building. Tenants of his 16th-floor apartment at
the same building sued him for $52,000 in February for, among other complaints, installing cheap furniture instead of the high-end finishes they were promised. [Post]
Two luxury cooperatives in the Gramercy Park neighborhood worth a combined $25 million are tied up in a legal action brought by a bank in Iceland that claims a former shareholder and former company executives looted it for more than $2 billion.
Glitnir Bank, based in Reykjavik, Iceland, accused the investor Jon Asgeir Johannesson and former bank executives of raiding the bank in 2007 and 2008 to prop up their own failing companies, in a lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court yesterday.
The bank won an order from a court in London freezing Johannesson’s assets, including co-ops in the neighboring apartment buildings Gramercy Park Hotel at 50 Gramercy Park North and 2 Lexington Avenue, according to information from PropertyShark.com. [more]
HGTV’s new realty reality show, “Selling New York,” premiers tonight at 9 p.m., promising to showcase the “top of the real estate food chain.” The show follows Gumley Haft Kleier’s Michele Kleier and her broker daughters, Samantha Kleier Forbes and Sabrina Kleier Morgenstern, as well as Core’s Shaun Osher, among other brokers from each firm as they maneuver their way through some of the city’s most high-end real estate transactions. In honor of the debut, The Real Deal did some digging to find out which of the city’s prized properties are slated to be featured this season. Among them: a four-bedroom loft at the Chelsea Mercantile listed for $22.45 million, the 25 Murray Street loft for which former Giants star Michael Strahan is asking $1.85 million, a $17 million landmarked townhouse at 109 East 69th Street, and a 2,295-square-foot spread at highly-anticipated One Brooklyn Bridge Park (see slide show of many of the homes above). Click here for more information about the residences expected to appear in the upcoming season.
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The Italian-born founder of model agency ID Model Management and a regular in the
Post’s Page Six column, Paolo Zampolli, filed suit in New York State
Supreme Court today claiming he was cheated out of more than $200,000
in commissions after he introduced a buyer for the property at 31 Bond
Street in Noho and was not listed as a broker on the sale. Zampolli, a licensed salesperson with Paramount Realty Group of
America, claims in the suit that he was the procuring broker that
brought his client, an Italian named Cristina Calori, to buy the
property at 31 Bond. The seller, a Japanese corporation called Heian
Bunka Center, which owns the six-story mixed-use building, was
represented by Massey Knakal Realty Services. Calori ended up going into contract on the property, with an asking
price of $8.5 million, but not listing Zampolli as the broker. The sale
is expected to close soon, the suit says. Zampolli, through Paramount, is suing Calori; her company Monster Real
Estate; Massy Knakal; and the Japanese firm Heian Bunka Center for a
total of $212,500, which represents half of a 5 percent commission, on
allegations including breach of contract and interfering with
contracts. Zampolli rejected the assessment by several brokers that he needed a
written contract with Calori — which he did not have — to prevail. “That is nonsense. [Brokers holding such a view] are amateurs. We will
have a judge rule on the legality of this case. That is why we went to
Supreme Court,” he said. [more]
Tenants at a $26,000-per-month three-bedroom apartment at the Gramercy Park Hotel have filed suit against their landlords for allegedly not following through on promised amenities and furnishings. Paolo Zampolli, the former head of ID Model Management, is suing landlords Jon Johannesson and Ingibjorg Palmadottir at 50 Gramercy Park North, a married pair well-known as one of Iceland’s most posh couples, for $52,000. Among the claims in the suit is that the high-end kitchen they were promised turned out to be an Ikea-quality particleboard mess that broke down after eight months and that the landlords didn’t make necessary fixes to a cracked window and malfunctioning heating and cooling system. The landlords have not yet commented on the suit.
