70 Broad Street

How much would you pay for peace of mind? A five-story meditation center at 70 Broad Street is now for sale. The price tag? $45 million. The landmarked, neoclassical building, built in 1908 by the American Bank Note Company, is currently owned and occupied by the Global Country of World Peace, a non-profit organization founded in the 1990s by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who introduced Transcendental Meditation in the 1950s. The technique became wildly popular in the 1960s and 70s, attracting followers like the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Jane Fonda. The group, which has centers called “Maharishi Peace Palaces” all over the world, purchased the stately granite building from developer Tony Goldman for $5.5 million in 2004, according to city records.

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You have to hand it to Prudential Douglas Elliman Executive Vice President Ariel Cohen for creativity. In a tough market, Cohen took matters into his own hands by creating a
$22.5 million exclusive listing from scratch by convincing five of his
neighbors to put their apartments on the market along with his, giving
buyers the option of combining them into one eight-bedroom,
9,500-square-foot Goliath, as the accompanying slide show of photographs shows. The resulting apartment, at the new condominium Downtown by Philippe Starck, at 15 Broad Street, would have eight bedrooms, 11 bathrooms and 22 windows. The listing is the most expensive one on the market in the Financial District, and one of the largest. If it sold, it would eclipse the previous record for the area, set at the Setai with a $7.82 million sale in 2008, according to Streeteasy.com. [more]