Famed hotelier André Balazs is saying goodbye to the Soho apartment that he’s owned for more than 15 years.
Balazs has listed his 4,200-square-foot apartment on Mercer Street — located just steps from the Mercer, one of his marquee hotel properties — for $12 million, the Wall Street Journal reports. Tal and Oren Alexander of Douglas Elliman have the listing.
The 63-year-old hotelier bought the property for $5.75 million in 2003, and according to the Journal, he spent the past decade-plus adding custom touches, including a 30-foot-long “light wall” and built-in bookshelves. He said that he’s spent roughly $3 to $5 million renovating the apartment, and even used it to test some of the features found in his high-end hotels. “If I could live with it, I knew it could work in a hotel,” he said.
But Balazs says he’s spending less time in New York and more time in Europe, hence the listing — though he acknowledged to the Journal that it’s “not the optimum time to sell” because of the coronavirus pandemic and the downturn in the city’s luxury market.
In addition to the Mercer, Balazs owns the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles — which he plans to turn into a private club by year’s end — and London’s Chiltern Firehouse. His biggest claim to fame was founding the buzzy Standard hotel brand in 1999, but he parted ways with that company in 2017. [WSJ] — Amy Plitt