Bruce Gelb gets diplomatic about selling UES co-op for $38M

They say diplomacy is the art of letting somebody else have your way. Perhaps that’s the strategy businessman and former U.S. ambassador Bruce Gelb has employed in Selling His Fifth Avenue pad.

Gelb, a buddy of George H.W. Bush from their prep school days, slashed the price of his 15-room apartment at 1060 Fifth Avenue to $38 million from $65 million, according to StreetEasy.

The apartment hit the market last April, and a few months later, Gelb teamed up with neighbor Joseph Siegelbaum, a partner at Goodwin Proctor, to offer the adjacent 10th-floor units for a combined $73.8 million.

A former Commissioner for the United Nations, Gelb was ambassador to Belgium under Bush. He was also a vice chairman of the board of Bristol-Myers Squibb and president of hair giant Clairol. He and his late wife, Lueza Gelb, owned the apartment for several decades.

The unit has six bedrooms and panoramic views of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park. The monthly maintenance is $11,900. Dolly Lenz has the listing.

The price cut means the unit is no longer in the running to break the building’s sales record. That title still belongs to SAB Capital’s Scott Bommer, who sold his duplex for $48.9 million in July 2008 after purchasing it for $46 million seven months earlier.