By Anna Tyzack
Last Updated: 1:05PM GMT 23 Jan 2009
You’d have thought there would have been better times to launch a $60 million (£41m) Manhattan penthouse onto the market, along with 41 other uber-expensive apartments. The top end of the New York property market is now at a standstill; home owners that need to sell up are slashing their prices. But James Sherwin, whose job it is to run the exclusive new residences, couldn’t be more excited. “We’re still in the business for something fun,” he says. “If you buy a landmark building, in a landmark location, in a landmark city, you can’t go wrong.”
The building in question is the Mark Hotel on Madison Avenue, a block away from Central Park, in New York’s glitzy Upper East Side. It was built in 1927 and was a well-known (if slightly fusty) four-star hotel until it closed for refurbishment last year. The Mark hit the headlines in the Nineties when Kate Moss and Johnny Depp trashed one of the hotel suites but Sherwin, who used to manage the Carlyle hotel, on the opposite side of Madison Avenue, would rather it was remembered for its better-behaved guests, such as Nicholas Sarkozy, Bob Dylan and Princess Caroline of Monaco.
In its new guise, it will be part hotel, part apartments, part trendy local haunt (New Yorkers use hotels to entertain much more than Londoners) – and no expense is being spared on transforming the jaded interior into a glittering designer-label palace. Sculptor Guy de Rougemont will be creating the bar, Jean Georges (New York’s answer to Gary Rhodes) is in charge of the restaurant, and Turnbull & Asser will be dressing the staff. “All they’ll be wearing of their own will be their underwear,” says Sherwin, nothing if not a perfectionist. “I’m a great believer in having two colours on the blazers.”
Meanwhile the Mark’s owners, Izak Senbahar and Simon Elias of Alexico Group, have commissioned French designer Jacques Granges to devise the building’s new look. “There’s a huge amount of anticipation about the opening and the design,” says Senbahar. “It’s a very traditional building so we had to come up with something unique. Jacques Granges has done houses for Valentino and Yves St Laurent, so we thought he was perfect.” Granges’s vision for the Mark includes bespoke furniture, fabrics, carpets, art and sculpture by contemporary designers such as Patrice Dangel, Mattia Bonetti and Eric Schmitt.
“Every piece of furniture will be numbered – it is going to be a collector’s item,” says Elias “The art work in each room costs the same as the Four Seasons would spend on an entire suite.”
Downstairs the lobby will have a black and white striped marble floor and pony skin sofas; the apartments have Crestron touch-screen room control panels to operate the blinds, temperature and music, and in place of the minibar will be a chilled chest of drawers, brimming with delicacies. Right at the top, the 1,200sq ft penthouse will gaze out across the Manhattan skyline, with domed ballroom, master bedroom suite with separate sitting room, and a glass lift to a roof terrace above. “There’s nothing in New York like this,” says Elias.
The owners of the Mark residences will have access to all the hotel facilities, including Italian linen, a Frederic Fekkai beauty salon, fitness centre, valet and dry cleaning, 24-hour room service and use of a hotel car. “I wanted a Bentley, so we’ve got one,” says Sherwin. “It’s granite-coloured with a 'beluga’ interior. It will be connected to the switchboard in case anyone calls your apartment while you are in it.”
Annual service charges for the properties are not cheap (approximately $7,000/£4,700 per year), but owners can earn an income by letting their apartment through the hotel (provided they sign a 10-page contract promising to keep it spick and span).
Sherwin will be charging from $1,000 (£680) per night for a hotel suite and owners will take 60 per cent of the earnings. “Hollywood film stars take apartments for a month or two when they’re filming – there’s a good chance you will rent it out,” says Senbahar.
But who is actually going to buy one of these apartments? With more than 90,000 finance workers in New York expected to lose their jobs by the end of 2009, there will be precious little bonus money sloshing around.
Jack McCabe, from McCabe Research and Consulting, has been predicting an American real estate crash since 2004.
“We’ve been analysing the vast amount of speculators and the overbuilding compared to historical absorption levels,” he says. “New York has been an isolated market compared to the rest of the US – and specifically Manhattan has been driven by the bonuses on Wall Street. But it started to flatten out at the end of February 2008 and I believe it will drop like a rock in 2009 – between 20 and 25 per cent over the next four quarters. Every building from top to bottom will take some kind of hit but the best locations will fare best.”
David Wine, vice chairman of Related Companies, who represents Knight Frank in New York, is more optimistic about the future, having sold more than $50m (£34m) worth of property in the newly launched Superior Ink development in the West Village in the past few months. The market in prime parts of Manhattan remains stable, he says, with prices levelling off in the emerging neighbourhoods. “Properties in good locations with amenities designed by celebrated architects will always have enduring value,” he says.
“There will always be a demand for New York real estate as it remains a place where people want to live and own property. In years past, buyers were making decisions very quickly. Now they’re doing their research for enduring value.”
Elias and Senbahar are expecting the Mark to sell to overseas investors and celebrities in search of a pied à terre in New York. The penthouse has already attracted interest from Russian and Middle Eastern buyers.
Sherwin believes the Mark is exactly what New York needs to cheer it up this of all years. “The more stressful life is, the more like a comfortable home a hotel needs to be,” he says.
“New York is the kind of city where you can’t go wrong and the Mark is in a quiet and highly exclusive residential area – you won’t need to worry about anything.”
- Apartments in the Mark, 25 East 77th Street, NY 10075, cost from $1.975 million (£1.33m) for a studio, to $23.5 million (£15.8m) for a five-bedroom suite and $60 million (£40m) for the penthouse. For more information call: 001 212 772 1600 or visit www.themarkhotel.com
- Conversion from Sterling to US dollars correct at time of press.
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