From left: the Rushmore at 80 Riverside Boulevard, Andrew Chung, principal at Carlyle Realty Partners and Gary Barnett, president of Extell Development

Lawyers for Extell Development and Carlyle Realty Partners yesterday appealed a state Supreme Court order to refund $16 million in escrow funds to buyers at the Rushmore condominium on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Justice Anil Singh ruled against the Rushmore developers, who filed a so-called Article 78 appeal against former Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who in April 2010 ordered return of the condo deposits to 41 buyers at the 80 Riverside Boulevard tower. [more]

From left: Rushmore, Aldyn and New York by Gehry (credit: Gehry Partners, LLP)

Wall Street professionals are accounting for less business in the residential sales and rental markets, as banks slash pay and jobs, and brokerages have begun shifting their focus towards home hunters in the technology, media and entertainment industries.

Citing data from Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, Crain’s reported that just 24 percent of the brokerage’s new luxury condominium buyers in 2011 worked in finance, compared to 35 percent in 2006 and 2007. [more]

The Rushmore, Alex Rodriguez and Modlin Group President Adam Modlin

Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez has sold his Rushmore condominium for a significant profit just 10 months after buying it last March, the Wall Street Journal reported. Rodriguez put the unit on the market in October with Modlin Group President Adam Modlin for $8 million, seven months after he purchased it for $5.5 million.  [more]

Goldstein Hill & West Architects, the architecture firm founded by Alan Goldstein, L. Stephen Hill and David West, former partners in Costas Kondylis’ firm, are beginning to forge an identity independent of the Kondylis legacy, according to Real Estate Weekly. Having completed all their remaining Costas Kondylis and Partners contracts, they’re opting for a more diverse range of projects, and looking outside New York. One of their most recent projects is Liberty Green, Milstein Properties’ residential building in Battery Park City. [more]

The Aldyn

From the March issue: The 40-story Aldyn is the latest in a wall of luxury towers, and the fourth by Extell Development, to sprout up on Riverside Boulevard in the West 60s.

This largely glass building, however, is a condo-rental hybrid — an option that, as The Real Deal has reported, has become increasing popular for developers since the economy soured because it helps them hedge against the uncertain sales market. The Related Companies has a hybrid project at 440 West 42nd Street, and J.D. Carlisle Development Corp. has the Beatrice/Eventi combination on 29th Street.

But the hybrid model is a first for Gary Barnett’s Extell, which has also built the Avery and the Rushmore, both condos, and the Ashley, a rental, on this patch of Riverside South, a site extending from 59th to 72nd streets. [more]

The Rushmore and violinist Pinchas ZukermanPinchas Zukerman, a world-renown violinist and a teacher at the Manhattan School of Music, has gone into contract on a three-bedroom unit at the Rushmore condominium, with his wife, cellist Amanda Zukerman, the New York Times reported. The asking price for the 1,712-square-foot 23rd-floor apartment, at 80 Riverside Boulevard, was $2.734 million. The developers, Extell Development Company, who are involved in a $16 million escrow dispute at the building, would not disclose how much Zukerman paid. [more]

Rushmore and Extell’s Gary BarnettLawyers for Extell Development and Carlyle Realty Partners, which operate together as CRP/ Extell, admitted to the state attorney general that they had no evidence to back up claims that a typographical error led to a $16 million escrow dispute at the Rushmore condominium, according to new documents filed in New York State Supreme Court. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed the evidence in response to an October 2010 suit by CRP/Extell that claimed the previous AG, Andrew Cuomo, erred in his April 2010 decision to order the Rushmore developer to refund deposits to 41individual buyers at the condo, at 80 Riverside Boulevard. [more]

Alex Rodriguez and the Rushmore

Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez has inked a deal to buy a four-bedroom, full-floor spread at Extell Development’s Upper West Side condominium, the Rushmore. According to the Wall Street Journal, Rodriguez, who has been renting a $30,000-a-month condo at 15 Central Park West and has been spotted apartment and townhouse hunting all over town in recent months, will pay between $5.5 million and $6 million for his new digs. Given that a Rushmore apartment on a higher floor recently sold for more than that, the Journal suggested that it’s possible Rodriguez got a so-called “celebrity discount,” though he did pay more than the buyer of a similar apartment one year ago. [more]

Andrew Cuomo (top), Gary Barnett and the RushmoreA state Supreme Court judge ruled against former Attorney General Andrew Cuomo who filed to dismiss a lawsuit by developer Gary Barnett in the long running $16 million escrow fund dispute at the Rushmore condominium. The former AG argued that the developers, Barnett’s Extell Development and Carlyle Realty Partners, operating as CRP/Extell, missed a key deadline to challenge the April 9, 2010 ruling, in which Cuomo ordered them to refund deposits to 41 buyers at the 80 Riverside Boulevard building. [more]

Lawyers for Carlyle Realty Partners and Extell Development, the sponsors of the Rushmore condominium on the Upper West Side, said they plan to challenge last week’s order by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to refund the deposits of 41 buyers, according to a court filing obtained by The Real Deal. In a letter to state Supreme Court Judge Debra James, lawyers for the sponsor, CRP/Extell, said they plan to file a so-called Article 78 that will challenge the AG ruling, and continue to argue that the disputed Sept. 1, 2008 rescission date was a “typographical error,” that should have been excused. “The AG decision concludes that certain purchasers have a right of rescission based on an obvious typographical error in a single digit in the 757-page offering plan for the Rushmore,” said Simpson Thatcher attorney Laura Murphy, who represents the two companies. The letter was in response to a demand by lawyers for Rushmore buyer Kelly Coffey to get documents and other evidence from CRP/Extell. Coffey, a managing director at JPMorgan Chase, is not one of the 41 buyers that complained to the AG, but filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court seeking a return of her deposit. [more]