The pool at 15 Central Park West

From the July issue: One of the selling points emphasized by brokers at the Edge condominium in Williamsburg is the major weekend scene at the pool, with lots of sunbathing, picnicking and socializing. At 20 Pine’s pool in the Financial District, neighbors regularly practice yoga and host parties.

But there will be no pool parties at 15 Central Park West this summer. Even as the weather heats up, the atmosphere at the über-exclusive condominium remains subdued, residents say, and the pool area is often deserted.

The Robert A.M. Stern-designed building has become the condominium of choice for hotshot celebrities like Denzel Washington and Sting, and finance bigwigs such as Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Citigroup Chairman Emeritus Sanford Weill. [more]

From left: Dennis Mangone and Michael Bolla
By Sarabeth Sanders and Amy Tennery

Michael Bolla and Dennis Mangone — both larger-than-life types with rosters of high-profile clients to match — have joined the city’s largest residential brokerage, bringing in some celebrity cachet after the recent departure of a certain pair of Israelis.

Those are, of course, former managing directors Ilan Bracha and Tamir Shemesh, who until recently had sat at the helms of Prudential Douglas Elliman’s first- and fifth-ranked teams. Bracha left at the start of the year to launch the first Manhattan franchise of Keller Williams, while Shemesh followed a few weeks later to join the Corcoran Group. Shemesh told The Real Deal at the time that the similarly-timed departures were “purely coincidence.”

So too, it seems, are the new hires, as Elliman has apparently been after both Bolla, who had been running his own boutique brokerage operation for the past two decades, and Mangone, a top broker at Brown Harris Stevens, for years. [more]

Brian Roberts, the Philadelphia-based Comcast CEO who struck a deal in December to take over NBC Universal from the General Electric Company, is in contract on a New York City pied-a-terre at 15 Central Park West, broker sources told the Wall Street Journal. Roberts had been eyeing two-bedroom units in the building with Central Park views that ranged in price from $7 million to $12.9 million, but it was unclear which one he ultimately settled upon. [more]