The 9,350-square-foot apartment on the third floor of the Plaza Hotel has been sold for $28 million to an undisclosed foreign buyer, according to an article today by Chloe Malle at observer.com
The apartment had been listed at $39 million last September by Stribling after Luigi Zunino was unable to finance its purchase.
The L-shaped apartment has 14 rooms and is the largest in the condo apartment conversion of the landmark hotel. It has 13-foot ceilings and a 55-foot-long gallery.
Mr. Zunino, according to an earlier article at observer.com, had "put $9 million into renovating and combining three units into one, hoped to resell the apartment for $100 million."
"A. Laurance Kaiser, of Key Ventures Real Estate, co-represented the buyer with his associate Craig M. Dix. Though bound by a non-disclosure agreement regarding the identity of the buyers, Mr. Kaiser did expound with enthusiasm on the apartment itself, telling The Observer matter-of-factly, "It's just the most spectacular apartment you've ever seen. There'll never be another like it, it just doesn't exist. It's drop-dead....There are no interior rooms. Nothing is on the shaft; all of them are outside rooms!"
An article by Daniel Geiger August 11 2009 in Real Estate Weekly noted that Mr. Zunino had purchased the office portion of the building at 660 Madison Avenue "at what many consider the height of the real estate market in October 2007" and had agreed "to what is widely held as one of the highest prices ever paid for a commercial real estate asset in the city, about $1,470 per square foot." The first nine floors of 660 Madison Avenue house the flagship location for the tenant the building is probably best known for, the luxury department store Barneys New York, and are owned as a separate commercial condominium interest from the office space above.
The article said that "Risanamento SPA, an Italian real estate company that is a subsidiary of the Zunino Group, has been scrambling to restructure its billions of dollars of debt to avoid bankruptcy and Luigi Zunino was forced to step down as the company's chief executive in July."
A March 9 2009 article at Bloomberg.com by Chiara Remondini and Armorel Kenna said that Mr. Zunino, the Italian entrepreneur who aimed to create a whole new neighborhood in Milan, is scrambling to sell the 2 billion-euro ($2.6 billion) development as debt payments loom. "Santa Giulia, a 20-minute drive from downtown Milan, promised luxury apartments designed by Norman Foster, boutiques such as Dolce & Gabbana and a green area as large as London's Hyde Park. Three years after construction began, the site is still mostly abandoned grounds with ditches and unpaved roads," according to the Bloomberg.com article.
Mr. Zunino, the article continued, "bought the Santa Giulia site, covering 1.2 million square meters (12.9 million square feet), for about 550 million euros in 2000. He planned to spend 1.4 billion euros to erect a 'city within a city' by 2011, according to the project's Web site. That would include homes, office buildings, hotels, schools, a congress center and a church."
The apartment had been listed at $39 million last September by Stribling after Luigi Zunino was unable to finance its purchase.
The L-shaped apartment has 14 rooms and is the largest in the condo apartment conversion of the landmark hotel. It has 13-foot ceilings and a 55-foot-long gallery.
Mr. Zunino, according to an earlier article at observer.com, had "put $9 million into renovating and combining three units into one, hoped to resell the apartment for $100 million."
"A. Laurance Kaiser, of Key Ventures Real Estate, co-represented the buyer with his associate Craig M. Dix. Though bound by a non-disclosure agreement regarding the identity of the buyers, Mr. Kaiser did expound with enthusiasm on the apartment itself, telling The Observer matter-of-factly, "It's just the most spectacular apartment you've ever seen. There'll never be another like it, it just doesn't exist. It's drop-dead....There are no interior rooms. Nothing is on the shaft; all of them are outside rooms!"
An article by Daniel Geiger August 11 2009 in Real Estate Weekly noted that Mr. Zunino had purchased the office portion of the building at 660 Madison Avenue "at what many consider the height of the real estate market in October 2007" and had agreed "to what is widely held as one of the highest prices ever paid for a commercial real estate asset in the city, about $1,470 per square foot." The first nine floors of 660 Madison Avenue house the flagship location for the tenant the building is probably best known for, the luxury department store Barneys New York, and are owned as a separate commercial condominium interest from the office space above.
The article said that "Risanamento SPA, an Italian real estate company that is a subsidiary of the Zunino Group, has been scrambling to restructure its billions of dollars of debt to avoid bankruptcy and Luigi Zunino was forced to step down as the company's chief executive in July."
A March 9 2009 article at Bloomberg.com by Chiara Remondini and Armorel Kenna said that Mr. Zunino, the Italian entrepreneur who aimed to create a whole new neighborhood in Milan, is scrambling to sell the 2 billion-euro ($2.6 billion) development as debt payments loom. "Santa Giulia, a 20-minute drive from downtown Milan, promised luxury apartments designed by Norman Foster, boutiques such as Dolce & Gabbana and a green area as large as London's Hyde Park. Three years after construction began, the site is still mostly abandoned grounds with ditches and unpaved roads," according to the Bloomberg.com article.
Mr. Zunino, the article continued, "bought the Santa Giulia site, covering 1.2 million square meters (12.9 million square feet), for about 550 million euros in 2000. He planned to spend 1.4 billion euros to erect a 'city within a city' by 2011, according to the project's Web site. That would include homes, office buildings, hotels, schools, a congress center and a church."
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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