The Penthouse Derby
by Brendan O’Connor
20 East End
• Available units from $4,535,000 to $11,950,000
• From 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms to
4 bedroom and 5.5 bathrooms
• From 1,912 square feet to 5,201 square feet
• Nearest subway: 6 train at 77th Street
Last night, the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group hosted a Kentucky Derby Celebration at the 20 East End sales gallery. The 2015 Kentucky Derby is on Saturday at Louisville’s Churchill Downs; the 20 East End sales gallery is at 744 Madison Avenue, between 64th and 65th Streets, while 20 East End is at 20 East End Avenue, between 80th and 81st Streets. Attendees of the Kentucky Derby Celebration — mostly brokers, and some press — were invited to “don your finest derby attire.” There were a lot of hats.
A sales gallery is a kind of model home for fancy apartments. It is hard to get someone to agree to spend millions of dollars on an apartment that is still under construction! To one degree of detail or another, a developer who is trying to sell such units may build out a replica of what one of those condos is anticipated to look like. “It was very important that the building not look like it’s in Epcot,” Nicole Siciliano-Trazzera, sales director on the project, told me as we took a tour of the sales gallery.
20 East End was designed by Robert A.M. Stern and developed by the Corigin Real Estate Group. In September, the New York Times described the building’s aesthetic as “Scaled-Down Luxury.” According to the Times, at 20 East End “you don’t have to own a 20-room apartment to live as though you do.” A few months later, the New York Observer sneered at this claim: “The very term ‘luxury,’ has in the last few years grown so inclusive as to be quite nearly meaningless.”
The seventeen-story building, when finished, will comprise forty-three apartments. Luxury amenities — such as individual wine and cordial lockers, and a kitchen that can be used for dinner parties too large to host in your apartment — will be found in communal spaces. Common space “was designed to be an extension” of owners’ homes, Edward Baquero, president of Corigin Real Estate, told the Observer. “The way the building performs is much more like a private club than a residential, family building,” Siciliano-Trazzera, said. “It has a very European sensibility.”
Siciliano-Trazzera was particularly proud of the building’s motor court, the first of its kind to be built in New York City in eighty years. “There’s no garage in the building,” she clarified. “There’s a runner on staff, so they’ll take your car to the garage for you when you return and pick the car up for you on your way out.” There’s also a limestone fountain. “It’s about the audible experience.”
A rendering of the view from outside one of the twenty-million-dollar penthouse terraces flashed across a colossal, high-definition screen. “Look at that terrace,” Siciliano-Trazzera said. “It’s sick, right?”
The building is five long-blocks and three short-blocks away from the nearest subway. “People love the refuge,” Siciliano-Trazzera said. “It’s like living in Manhattan, with a small-town feel.”
151 East 78th Street, #PHB
• $10,850,000
• 3 beds, 3.5 baths
• 3,381 square feet
• Common Charges: $4,427; Monthly Taxes: $2,730
• Nearest subway: 6 train at 77th Street
Downstairs, there is another sales gallery, for 151 East 78th Street, another new development. Incidentally, buildings housing non-profit organizations were sold and demolished to make way for both 151 East 78th Street and 20 East End: Spruce Capital Partners, the developer on East 78th Street, bought three townhouses on the block in 2012, including one belonging to the Ackerman Institute for the Family, which listed its townhouse after losing 3.3 million dollars to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme; that same year, the City University of New York sold its former headquarters at 20 East End Avenue for nearly sixty-two million dollars.
All of the units in 151 East 78th have been sold except for one, Cathy Taub, a broker with Stribling, told me. So, the sales gallery — which had not been built out to nearly the same level of detail as the gallery for 20 East End — did its job. “In order to sell apartments of this magnitude, people want to see and touch exactly what they’re buying,” Taub said. She showed me into the master bathroom, and pointed me towards the shower. “We’ve had eight people in there,” she laughed. “Sorry. I’m on my second mint julep.”
I asked Taub what would happen to the model apartment once 151 East 78th was completely sold. “I don’t know, actually,” she said. “I guess it’ll just become something completely different?”