UPDATE, Jan. 22, 6:05 p.m.: A lawyer who defended relocating homeless men on the Upper West Side is himself relocating.
Attorney Randy Mastro, who once served as chief of staff and deputy mayor to Rudy Giuliani and is now a partner at Gibson Dunn, is selling his townhouse at 21 East 83rd Street for $18 million.
Mastro was tapped last year to represent a group of Upper West Side residents who opposed the placement of approximately 200 homeless men at the Lucerne, located on West 79th Street near Amsterdam Avenue. The group filed a lawsuit seeking to relocate the men to a Lower Manhattan hotel, a move that generated pushback from advocates for the homeless. (It remains tied up in court.)
His Upper East Side home became a target after the Lucerne battle became public. In October, a group splashed the townhouse’s door with red paint, and spray-painted messages like “Randy Mastro you can’t replace us” on the facade and the sidewalk.
After the attack, Mastro said in a statement, “if they thought they were going to intimidate me, they picked the wrong guy.”
Mastro purchased the 5,500-square-foot home in 2016 for $14 million. The circa-1925 building, which is located less than a block from Museum Mile, has six bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, five wood-burning fireplaces, a full-floor master bedroom suite and a large back garden.
“We love everything about the townhouse and the neighborhood, but we have been living outside the city for most of the past year and intend to continue to do so,” Mastro told The Real Deal via email. “Hence, at this point in our lives, we simply don’t need such a large place in the city.”
Brian J. Manning and Christopher E. Franklin of Brown Harris Stevens are marketing the property; they could not immediately be reached for comment.
UPDATE: This story was updated to add a statement from Randy Mastro.