If you’re a swimmer, large Manhattan buildings like the Orion, Zeckendorf Towers and Miraval Living boast pools that will allow you to do your thing — but you’ll have to rub shoulders with (gasp!) other people.
For $15,000 a month, however, you can skip the crowds.
At Penthouse A at Le Triomphe, a 1980s-era high-rise at 245 East 58th Street, there is a convertible three-bedroom available for rent that has a 25-foot-long pool. If you’re willing to double your spending, head downtown: Unit 1A at 51 Walker Street (a three-bedroom duplex loft) has a 21-foot pool surrounded by a heated limestone floor. That unit is available for rent for those who can write a monthly check for $30,000 — and for sale for $8.995 million.
Private pools, it seems, are making a splash in Manhattan.
One builder estimated that there are thousands of them, mostly in condos and townhouses.
Vanity Fair recently included a spread of filmmaker Julian Schnabel’s new Palazzo Chupi in the far West Village, pool included. Bob Guccione’s old townhouse on East 67th Street (he lost the place to creditors after he declared bankruptcy, and it was recently sold) has a 32-foot Roman-style pool on the first floor.
Supermarket magnate Ron Burkle paid $17 million for the former Sky Studio at 704 Broadway, which hosted Jerry Seinfeld’s wedding. The pad comes complete with a 25-foot heated pool that has been featured in some “Sex in the City” episodes, and cost the previous owner $500,000 to build.
In the suburbs, a concrete pool starts at $85,000, said David Coonan, general manager of All American Custom Pools in Norwalk, Conn. But a pool in the city with smaller dimensions starts at $135,000 (double for steel). The expense is because of logistics, said Coonan, whose company is working on a pool project on West Broadway.
In one basement near Park Avenue, the back-and-forth over the pool’s exact placement has taken two years. “No one can agree where the pool is going to go,” Coonan said. “We’re talking fractions of inches.”
Indoor pools can also be difficult to maintain. “You start to smell chlorine all the time,” said Claudine DeMatos at Prudential Douglas Elliman’s DeNiro Group, which represents 51 Walker Street.
And, truth be told, not all shoppers need one.
“From a marketing standpoint, what percentage of
the population has to have a pool in their apartment?” said Melissa Brown at the Olnick Organization, which represents Le Triomphe. “It’s just pure opulence to dedicate such a large space to something like that.”
The owners of one townhouse agreed, getting rid of a $500,000 pool put in by heirs to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. “The new owners didn’t like it and covered it up,” Coonan said.