“I was convinced it would be the best building in New York,” said Sarina Abramovich, one of the earliest residents of 432 Park. Now, correspondence between residents, some of the richest and most influential people in the world, reveal thorny arguments over how to remedy the problems without tanking property values. Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez bought a 4,000-square-foot apartment there for $15.3 million in 2018, and sold about a year later. The 96th floor penthouse at the top of the building sold in 2016 for nearly $88 million to a company representing Saudi retail magnate Fawaz Alhokair. The building, a slender tower that critics have likened to a middle finger because of its contentious height, is mostly sold out, with a projected value of $3.1 billion. The disputes at 432 Park also highlight a rarely seen view of New York’s so-called Billionaire’s Row, a stretch of supertall towers near Central Park that redefined the city skyline, and where the identities of virtually all the buyers were concealed by shell companies. It has already been surpassed by a newcomer on New York’s Billionaire’s Row in Midtown Manhattan, but it remains one of the most expensive apartment buildings in the world. The tower at 432 Park Ave., far left, became the tallest residential building in the world in 2015. Engineers privy to some of the disputes say many of the same issues are occurring quietly in other new towers. Less than a decade after a spate of record-breaking condo towers reached new heights in New York, the first reports of defects and complaints are beginning to emerge, raising concerns that some of the construction methods and materials used have not lived up to the engineering breakthroughs that only recently enabled 1,000-foot-high trophy apartments.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |