Metro

Inside the scandals of 740 Park, the world’s richest building

Venerable 740 Park Ave. has long been known for its embarrassment of riches. Currently, three of its fabled duplexes are on the market for sums ranging from $22.5 million to $32.5 million, and the record-setting 2014 sale of another duplex — for $71.3 million — still represents the second-highest price ever paid for a New York co-op.

But lately, the building has been a public embarrassment.

740 Park Ave.Robert Miller

Residents are still disturbed by a string of unsolved robberies that happened three years ago. In April, a two-alarm fire began in a sauna in the sixth- and seventh-floor duplex owned by J. Ezra Merkin, the fund-feeder to convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff. Among those forced from their homes was New York’s richest man, David Koch.

And late last month, the co-op was sheathed in scaffolding after chunks of its limestone façade fell to the street below.

The 86-year-old building has had hard times before. It failed as a co-op in the Depression, and its apartment values didn’t recover for 40 years. But today’s trail of tears begins in 2011, when Occupy Wall Street protested outside 740’s bronze front doors because of its owner roster: Koch. Merkin. Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman. Former CIT Group boss John Thain. Hedge-funders Charles Stevenson, Israel Englander, David Ganek and Steven Mnuchin — now Donald Trump’s chief fundraiser. Brand-name heirs Thomas Tisch and Ronald Lauder.

In May 2012, a series of staff convulsions began with the departure of 740’s longtime superintendent.

“That building had been mismanaged and ripped off for years,” says a former executive at the building’s management firm. (Robert Pincus, the building’s manager through Brown Harris Stevens, declined to be interviewed.) Two months later, a new super replaced 10 staffers — six were fired, four retired. Late last year, that super was also replaced: A staffer hints he fell afoul of George David, retired chairman of United Technologies, who became co-op board president last year. (David had no comment.)

Novelist Danielle Ganek and her financier husband, David, are said to be selling their place.Patrick McMullan

The robberies began the next spring, but weren’t reported to police until after the six-week crime spree ended. Financier Ganek and his novelist wife, Danielle, were hit first, losing $100,000 worth of watches and jewelry; then hedge-funder Englander and wife Caryl, who lost a $7,500 gold watch; the elderly widow of financier Charles Dyson (an $82,000 diamond bracelet); and finally, Merkin and wife Lauren (jewelry worth more than $50,000). The thieves were inept; a building source says Merkin, the Madoff crony, kept wads of cash in a closet that wasn’t touched. But at the time, a former manager and a resident called the thefts no-brainers, since few residents locked their doors.

Hedge-funder Israel Englander and his wife, Caryl, were among several robbery victims.Patrick McMullan

“It seemed high-security until you got inside,” the resident said. “I was shown other apartments by the staff when people were away. If you have five residences and 15 watches, the chances are you’ll think you misplaced it. That’s the life [these tenants] lead. It made them easy targets.”

Still, “it’s the last place you’d expect a robbery,” a second, female tenant said. “The Kochs have 11 bodyguards. We assumed it was an inside job.”

The tenant added that 740 residents “have so much, they barely notice. They think nothing of leaving a diamond watch on a counter and forgetting it’s there for two weeks.”

But she credited the thieves with smarts for ignoring the museum-quality art on many 740 walls. “It’s too obvious if you take something big.”

‘[The residents] have so much, they barely notice. They think nothing of leaving a diamond watch on a counter and forgetting it’s there for two weeks.’

 - female tenant of 740 Park Ave.

That June, the building hired a private security firm, which discovered that 740’s surveillance cameras had been turned off during at least one robbery, and identified a recently hired handyman and a porter who’d worked in the building since 2008 as having entered the video control room just before the system went down. After the handyman was fired, he was approached by private detectives working for one of the robbery victims.

When David Ganek (who is suing the US government for “recklessly” shutting down his Level Global hedge fund) asked for a police report to make an insurance claim, police were finally called, but made no arrests. A law enforcement source told The Post that the co-op board had sabotaged the investigation, but some staffers think the tenant’s PI scared the thieves. “Whatever [pilfered items they had likely] ended up in the Long Island Sound,” the building source says.

The porter left, too, that August, after he got $40,000 to go quietly. The building’s manager was the next to go, that September. Security was subsequently strengthened.

The pad of Steven Mnuchin — Donald Trump’s money man — has flooded neighbors’ homes.WireImage

Compared to jewel heists, floods are small change, but 740 has those, too. Mnuchin is the third-generation owner of an apartment (which mostly sits empty, as he is in California) that has been the source of several, flooding the Ganek duplex below and the home of Tamara and Randall Winn below that. (Tamara is the daughter of disgraced billionaire industrialist Ira Rennert.) Separately, the Ganeks also flooded the Winns. Agita and litigation followed.

On April 6, 2016, 740’s worst day began when a household staffer switched on Ezra Merkin’s sauna, where clothes and books were stored, starting a fire. Residents of apartments on the corner of Park and 71st were deluged with water from hoses below — affecting real estate big Andrew Stone and the Kochs — and smoke from the fire above (the Tisches and designer Vera Wang). Smoke also traveled laterally, stinking up the homes of the Ganeks, Italian construction heiress Giovanna Bongiasca and banker Thomas Strauss and his wife, Bonnie.

“People had to scramble,” one finance-pro tenant says. David Koch’s wife, Julia, shoved paintings into Hefty bags and fled to the street to watch the FDNY fight the fire. Fashionista Wang was already living elsewhere due to her ongoing renovation, which is now further delayed. The Ganeks, forced out twice previously due to leaks, left again briefly, and are back in 740. But, a source says, they’d already thrown in the towel and are juggling competing offers for their apartment.

The financial damage will be greatest for the insurance companies that flooded the building with adjusters after the fire. “Damage and inconvenience is a big number,” the financier source says. Beyond rebuilding, insurers have to provide comparable housing, “and that’s not the Holiday Inn.” Many of the dispossessed are living in the Mark Hotel, alongside the Englanders, who hope to complete their combination of two apartments into a massive triplex before Sept. 15. All work must stop then due to 740 rules that limit renovations to summertime (when so many tenants are out of town).

During the fire, Julia Koch — the wife of NYC’s richest man, David — rescued pricey paintings in a Hefty bag.Getty Images

“I couldn’t stay more than 10 minutes,” one evacuee recalls of her post-fire visit. “I felt sick. It’s inconceivable what fire can do.” Merkin’s apartment has been gutted — some might call that karma — and the Tisches suffered “enormous damage,” says the finance pro. “It’s gonna be a mess for a while.”

That means angry neighbors. Four apartments were already being gut-renovated, and three of those are now in their fourth year of work, regularly pitting neighbor versus neighbor.

Miranda Tang, wife of a Hong Kong semiconductor magnate, is furious about financier Howard Marks’ work on a double duplex. Schwarzman has complained about real estate developer William Zeckendorf’s construction, and Alice Tisch about Wang’s.

Adding insult to injury, the elegant 740 has now been scaffolded for repairs to its crumbling limestone façade, a process begun years ago.

One dark cloud has a silver lining. Koch and his wife, the former Julia Flesher, moved to 740 from Jacqueline Onassis’ former apartment at 1040 Fifth after its board refused to let him buy a second apartment for his mother-in-law. Last fall, the elderly Mrs. Flesher fell on steps in 740’s gloomy lobby and was hospitalized with multiple broken bones.

She recovered, but the Kochs joined a 740 faction demanding a lobby renovation, including Stephen Schwarzman’s wife, Christine, who’s compared it to a funeral parlor. Some less wealthy tenants who bought in when apartments cost a fraction of their current value are opposed, but a multiyear restoration of the lobby, spearheaded by Alice Tisch, recently began with the installation of temporary brighter lights and grip strips on the stairs. Restoration of the wood paneling, Art Deco fixtures and decorative ceiling will follow.

Socialite Alice Tisch and her husband, Brown University chancellor Thomas, are pushing for lobby updates — but poorer neighbors are miffed.FilmMagic

Despite it all, the residents of 740 are biting their well-fed lips and bearing up. “Unfortunately, fires happen,” says Koch, “and there are much more important things to focus on. We are blessed that our family, staff and pets were all spared from injury.”

Adds someone quite close to the co-op board, “Not everyone is happy, but you suck it up. People here have come together in a remarkable way.”

Michael Gross is the author of “740 Park” and the forthcoming “Focus: The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers.”