July 28, 2012

Renting... at $60,000 a month.

"Will they get any takers? Especially when the undulating window design by the starchitect Frank Gehry lets you see and be seen by your penthouse neighbor, and possibly even by a neighbor below?"
“There is the whole vertical living thing here,” said MaryAnne Gilmartin, an executive vice president of the Forest City Ratner Companies, the building’s developer (and the developer of The New York Times building). “There are a lot of social connections in the building. There are little pieces and slivers of the building where you are looking into other units.”

To each his own, but to me that seems the biggest downside of the Gehry penthouses, along with interior finishes that, while supposedly designed by Mr. Gehry himself, don’t seem quite up to the standard of the top-flight condo buildings Ms. Gilmartin says they are competing with.
Ouch!

9 comments:

JAL said...

That's what -- what are they called these days? -- "window treatments" are for.

edutcher said...

60 Gs a month for the privilege of being pushed around by Nanny
Bloomberg?

New meaning to the phrase, "More money than brains".

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

"Starchitect"? That is the sort of clever that gets really old, really fast. As (i think) would playing peekaboo on your filthy-rich neighbors.

ricpic said...

"...there are little pieces and slivers of the building where you can look into other units..."

Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg!






A totally meaningless comment to those here, most likely 95%, who have no memory of the earliest days of television, when Molly Goldberg would yoo hoo her neighbors from her apartment looking into their apartments and be yoo hooed back on The Goldbergs.

madAsHell said...

I fail to understand the fascination with Mr. Gehry.

He's credited with the Experience Music Project building here in town. It's also known as the Stay-Puffed Palace, and the Technicolor Turd.

bagoh20 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bagoh20 said...

I'm all pro-capitalism, and property rights, and people have a right to spend their own money any way they want, but really?

I also understand that almost regardless of how you spend your money, it helps others when you do, and despite the ridicule from lefties, it does actually trickle down, and usually more effectively than charity, but I would not be able to do this: to walk past people on the street knowing that one month's rent could turn their lives around would embarrass me.

I still have an unbreakable frugality from being poor for many years, and I think it has served me well. I would enjoy living in Manhattan, but would never do it simply because the cost would be psychologically impossible for me accept.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

bagoh20,

I also understand that almost regardless of how you spend your money, it helps others when you do, and despite the ridicule from lefties, it does actually trickle down, and usually more effectively than charity, but I would not be able to do this: to walk past people on the street knowing that one month's rent could turn their lives around would embarrass me.

Yes, indeed. I feel the same way about $30K/plate political fundraisers. There are people working full-time for a year for much less money than that, and you seriously can't think of any better use for it than to hobnob with a Presidential candidate over dinner?

Joe Schmoe said...

If people in NY will pay $100 to eat rat in a gallery, is it really too much of a stretch to think one of them will pay $60K a month for rent?