SELLER: Richard O. Ullman
LOCATION: 15 Central Park West, New York City, NY
PRICE: rumored to be $55,000,000
SIZE: 5,610 square feet, 4 bedrooms 5.5 bathrooms (plus 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom staff room)
DESCRIPTION: This spectacular terraced penthouse comprising 5,600 square feet of living space including 4 exquisitely appointed bedrooms and 6.5 marble bathrooms is located in the most prestigious building on Central Park West. The! apartment features panoramic views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline and includes high ceilings, an extraordinary layout, grand proportions, magnificent entertainment spaces, the finest of finishes and exquisite architectural details throughout.
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Over the last several months there has been much ballyhoo, brouhaha and spilled ink over a somewhat mysterious doo-plex condo at the ritzy Robert A.M. Stern designed building at 15 Central Park West in New York City rumored to be quietly listed at an astronomical asking price above $75,000,000. Perhaps some of the children have been reading the scuttlebutt about the apartment in the New York newspapers along with Your Mama.
Here’s what’s been happening…Back in March of 2008 a wildly wealthy pharmaceutical benefits bigwig named Richard O. Ullman forked over $23,500,000 for a 5,610 square foot unit on the 18th and 19th floors of the pre-war wannabe building that in 2007 and early 2008 was the epicenter of high-priced real estate in New York City. Financial titans like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill bought big apartments along with famous folks like Oscar winning actor Denzel Washington, NASCAR fat cat Jeff Gordon and tantric sex practitioners Sting and Trudie Styler.
Mister Ullman, who sold his company National Prescriptions Administrators in 2002 for more than half a billion bucks, never moved into the 4 bedroom and 5.5 pooper property which also includes a staff bedroom and pooper located, natch, off the service hall. It’s not, chickens, that Mister Ullman didn’t move in because he caught a case of real estate cold feet after closing on the apartment but rather that he possesses a pair of ridiculously large real estate cajones. Just months after signing on the dotted line rumors started to swirl and slip down the gossip grapevine that Mister Ullman was flipping the apartment back on to the market with an unabashed and undeniably greedy asking price more than triple what he paid for the place. The two-floor terraced unit over looking Central Park didn’t pop up on the open market but it was widely thought to be quietly available for a not s! o quiet price of $75,000,000.
If Your Mama is being honest, and we always are, it puzzles and perplexes Your Mama how Mister Ullman’s real estate agent managed to muster the jaw dropping audacity to utter such an insanely large number with a straight face to other real estate agents or prospective buyers because, you know, it makes us giggle and guffaw with aghast to even think of the steel nerve it takes to buy and flip an apartment back on the market just a few months after closing at three or four times the price paid without so much as having replaced a fixture or painted a wall. Not surprisingly, the apartment languished unloved and unwanted, a lonely suite of rooms doomed to be the ass-end of many jokes and the poster child for the sort of uncurbed, unrestrained and ravenous real estate avarice that ran rampant in Manhattan the previous few years.
After months of speculation and whispering about whether the apartment really is or is not for sale and at what bank account draining price, the dee-luxe doo-plex has finally hit the open market. While listing agent Dolly Lenz, real estate über-agent and She-Ra of the 12 Blackberries, endeavors to keep the asking price an ancient Chinese secret by marking the number as “Price Upon Request,” the tireless real estate writers at The New York Times recently revealed the asking price is believed by real estate insiders to be around $55,000,000 with, according to listing information, monthly fees of $8,600. It does not take any flicking of the well worn beads on Your Mama’s bejeweled abacus to see that although the (al! leged) asking price is far lower than it (allegedly) used to be, it is still a ballsy, brave and hair raising number considerably more than twice what Mister Ullman paid just over one year ago.
Let’s take a spin through the place to see what sort of condo Mister Ullman and Miz Lenz think is worth fifty-five million clams in a not particularly brisk market in which many of the potential buyers of trophy properties are sitting on the sidelines and keeping their purse strings tightly pulled.
After an elevator ride that does not conclude with a private landing, one passes through the front door and into a small vestibule with a coat closet on the left and a lounge and windowless powder pooper on the right. Your Mama can’t imagine what use this “lounge” might have in a private apartment but in the event there is ever a line to use the terlit there is, thankfully, plenty of space to accommodate. The vestibule leads to a large foyer with a herringbone patterned wood floors and a ceiling fixture that looks suspiciously similar to the one the super installed in the rent controlled 2-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan Your Mama occupied before marrying up and moving into a downtown doo-plex with the Dr. Cooter. On the left is a sweeping staircase that rises to the private quarters and to the right a library that opens through two sets of pane-less French doors to the 1,000+ square foot terra! ce that runs the width of the lower floor of the apartment.
Straight through the foyer is the sizable 600 square foot living room which features a featureless fireplace and two more pane-less French doors that provide access to the terrace which rather dramatically hangs over Central Park and provides stellar views of the posh apartment towers that line Fifth Avenue and Central Park South. A second small vestibule separates the living room from the dining room and contains an actual closet as well as a booze closet for whetting one’s whistle. Adjacent to the dining room and also connected to the foyer by a short hall is the kitchen/breakfast/family room which, quite frankly, isn’t any bigger or more finely finished than the set up Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter have in our far less expensive crib on the West Coast. In fact, we’d bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly and our sour-faced pussy Sugar that our kitchen is not only nicer than this one, but was al! so more expensive. We’re not bragging children, we’re saying that for $55,000,000 the kitchen ought to be knock down spectacular and this one just ain’t. Beyond the kitchen is the service hall and civilized sized staff suite which, to Mister A.M. Stern’s credit is actually large enough that the owner’s live-in house gurl won’t feel like she’s stuck up in a cell at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women.
The second floor is accessible by a Norma Desmond style staircase in the foyer and, for the lazy folks, by a private elevator that lifts a person from the hallway between the foyer and the kitchen up into the upper foyer. Two family bedrooms, each with a marble encrusted private pooper, face the building’s courtyard and can be seen into by anyone with eyes who happens to be living on the other side of the courtyard on an higher floor. A third bedroom, shown as a guest room on the floor plan, also offers an all marble private pooper and small closet and dressing area. A second entrance and small laundry room are tucked away near the guest room.
The master suite is comprised of an entrance hall, large bedroom with a trio of windows looking over the park, four walk-in closets, three additional closets, two marble bathrooms including one with a park view soaking tub and separate shower, and a private study/exercise room that is, the children will note, larger than the house gurl’s bedroom downstairs.
The rooms are simple white boxes with wood floors that wait patiently for the owner to hire up a smart architect and a small army of nice gay decorators to work their magic. This is all well and good because, let’s be honest, most ridiculously rich people often do a re-do on the fancy apartments they buy, but for fifty-five million smackers the lack of detail in this apartment is, well, inexcusable. For $55,000,000 Your Mama wants a meticulously and perfectly completed mansion in the sky that is not only move in ready with a paneled library but comes complete with on-call terlit attendants and a 24/7 ger-may chef to whip up box cakes and baby back ribs at a moment’s notice. But alas…
In an effort to lighten his real estate portfolio, Mister Ullman also has a 4 bedroom, 4,415 square foot, 44th floor apartment at the Trump International on Central Park West on the market with an asking price of $18,450,000. Your Mama wishes the healthcare honcho all the luck in the world selling his high-priced pads because iffin anyone were to ask us, and of course no one did, we think he’s gonna need it at these prices.
