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)

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]

Conan O’Brien and the Majestic

Conan O’Brien has found a buyer for his seven-bedroom, eight-and-a-half-bathroom duplex in the Majestic building on the Upper West Side, according to the Wall Street Journal. The luxury co-op sits across from the Dakota on the corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West. Although it’s not immediately clear what the buyer’s offer on the unit was, the asking price had been $29.5 million. If the unit does close for around that amount, it would rank as one of the biggest residential sales of the year so far in Manhattan. [WSJ]

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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]

During the boom, New Yorkers increasingly relied on “price-per-square-foot” as a way to compare rapidly rising apartment values.
The metric is even more popular in the downturn, as discount-crazed buyers look for good deals.
But price-per-square-foot isn’t as reliable a measure as they think. Unbeknownst to many shoppers, it’s extremely difficult to determine the true square footage of a Manhattan property, experts say.
“When it comes to square footage in New York City, it’s the Wild West,” Bill Staniford, the CEO of real estate data Web site PropertyShark. “It’s measured in so many different ways.”
And in the current downturn, the difficulty of determining square footage is contributing to a number of other problems, from low appraisals to ruined deals.
Staniford, who constantly fields questions from brokers about inaccurate square footage data on file with the city, said using price-per-square-foot as a measure of value is “totally pointless.”
That puts “every single broker in a very difficult situation, unless they want to break out the measuring tape,” he said.
Even then, they might still be wrong.
It’s fairly easy to determine the square footage of a suburban single-family home: measure the footprint of the house, factor in the number of stories, and you’re done.
Manhattan apartments are a different story. [more]

A 5,000-square-foot, four-bedroom spot at the Dakota, eyed this past summer by actor Alec Baldwin, is now in contract for $11.5 million with someone else after a more than 50 percent price reduction. The co-op apartment, at the luxurious prewar 1 West 72nd Street building, was listed at $24 million in June 2008 with Brown Harris Stevens. It underwent three price reductions — most recently to $12.5 million — before being scooped up by Mark Fisch, ex-commissioner of the New Jersey Council on Affordable Housing and currently a managing partner at New Jersey real estate firm Continental Properties. [Post]