The above skyscraper is the projected finished product—432 Park Avenue. This is not a new commercial building.
At 96 stories (1,396 feet), it has no company in the space it occupies atop Manhattan’s skyline. The Empire State Building tops out some 150 feet below that. Absent its spire, the newly built World Financial Center—itself a giant—is 28 feet shorter than this new cathedral to uber-wealth. 432 Park Avenue can be seen from all five boroughs of New York City, from inbound Metro-North trains coming in along the Harlem River, from the Meadowlands in New Jersey, and from several vantage points on Long Island.
A little ostentatious, no. Outrageously ostentatious.
The most remarkable thing about 432 Park, however, is not just its sheer size. It is the fact that, in a building so tall and imposing, with over 400,000 square feet of usable interior space, there are only 104 units for people to live in.
[bold my emphasis] That made my stomach hurt. But like everything the super wealthy make—it's not really what it says it is.
The building's southern face, where residents are likely to enter, is on 56th Street, about 150 feet from the corner of the famed boulevard. The tower also borders 57th Street, where a chic shirt maker and an auction house lie between 432 Park (the building) and Park Avenue (the actual avenue).
That's right. It really shouldn't have a "Park Avenue" address at all. But, for the excruciatingly cheap price of $11,000 per unit, you get to tell your friends to have their drivers go to 432 Park Avenue. It's a pretty good deal when you consider:
It is widely believed that the building will only be one-quarter occupied at all times, even though it will be completely sold out. Keep in mind that these are pied-a-terres that begin at $7 million each and include several full-floor parcels in the $75 million range. More than anything else, this speaks to the insatiable appetite of the world’s greatly expanded billionaire class. Middle Eastern oil magnates, Chinese billionaires, Russian oligarchs, and the Latin American aristocracy all have one thing in common: More money than they know what to do with and a desperation to get as much of it out of their home countries as possible. New York real estate works very well as both a facilitator of this as well as a store of value.
A monument to ludicrocity. The $11k goes to the city and so, even when the filthy rich shoot a money gun into the sky, the municipality gets the short end of the stick. UPDATE: Some of the commenters below have brought up the fact that NYC serves to reap the benefits of big time foreign money filtering in via property tax, etc. However, that is not really going to happen–at least the way things stand these days:
At 56 Leonard Street, for example, the buyer who is in contract for the record-breaking penthouse would typically pay $140,000 a year in real estate taxes, according to estimates from the offering plan. But because the project laid its foundation in 2008 — it stalled during the downturn and was resurrected only recently — it was eligible to apply for a 10-year tax abatement. The city has given its preliminary approval, which means that when the building is completed, the penthouse buyer will pay just $33,000 annually for the first two years, with taxes progressively increasing through the remaining eight.
The only "hidden" costs these poor billionaires must steel themselves against are:
On top of those costly common charges come fees like the mandatory membership in the building’s gym, known as The Club at 432 Park Avenue, which bases its charges on the size of the apartment, with larger units owing more. Then there is the $2,000 that owners are required to pay annually toward the building’s dining room, and the additional $1,200 in private dining services that owners are required to buy annually, whether or not they use the restaurant.
So there's that.