It’s a slam dunk of a deal for one deep-pocketed condo buyer.
While many purchasers of luxury Manhattan properties are trying to get out of their contracts or renegotiate for lower prices, Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander has just closed on a $25 million penthouse at the new Superior Ink condo building in the West Village. The closing price is the number he agreed on a year ago.
Alexander is getting 6,321 square feet of raw space plus four terraces.
The building also includes seven townhouse residences, with roof terraces and four to six bedrooms each, priced at $12.95 million and up. Recent home hunters there include Alex Rodriguez and Kate Hudson, who were unhappy that the penthouse was not an option.
Superior Ink already has a prominent list of buyers in contract, including Hilary Swank, Marc Jacobs and NASCAR star Jimmie Johnson.
Tory story
We hear that designer Tory Burch has bought the Howard Gittis home at 500 Ox Pasture Lane in Southampton. Sources say the mansion and an adjacent parcel of land was sold separately to Burch and another buyer for around $40 million.
While the residence had been on the market for years, Corcoran Group broker Tim Davis split up the estate into different parcels to attract buyers. Burch bought the house, and a neighbor bought an adjacent parcel because he didn’t want to see anything developed on the land. Perhaps Burch will now sell the Meadow Lane oceanfront home she won in her divorce settlement from Chris Burch last year.
Hello, Neumann
Kimberly Dawn Neumann, a 39-year-old Broadway actress who also writes magazine pieces about relationships, might have the best rental deal in the city.
Neumann has won a contest conducted by discount clothing retailer Daffy’s. She’s getting a two-bedroom apartment in the West Village for $700 a month for 10 months. It’s a huge upgrade from Neumann’s 300-square-foot Midtown studio.
Italian job
It turns out that the buyer of the condo above Sting‘s duplex at 88 Central Park West is Paolo Pellegrini, an ultra-wealthy Italian-born financier.
Pellegrini, once married to art-collecting NYC socialiate Beth Rudin DeWoody, bought the apartment for under its $10.9 million asking price. His new seventh-floor, 3,500-square-foot co-op is in a gorgeous Beaux Arts building with great views of Central Park. It has three bedrooms, three bathrooms and two maid’s rooms.
Pellegrini, we hear, also toured Sting’s 6,600-square-foot apartment, which has been on and off the market. Sting and Trudie Styler raised four kids in this apartment, where they’ve lived for 20 years — though they now also own at 15 CPW.
Pellegrini bought the 88 CPW residence from Jean Thomas Fox, who was well known in the 1960s for singing backup vocals for legends like Ella Fitzgerald, Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand. Her former broker was the late Linda Stein — the iconic and lovely broker to top musicians — who was murdered in 2007.
Pellegrini helped make billions for John Paulson‘s hedge fund — by betting that the U.S. housing market would crash — before launching out with his own fund at the beginning of this year.