In the last few weeks, Extell Development’s Gary Barnett has used club/restaurant owner Michael Hirtenstein as a piñata while hyping One57, Extell’s new condo tower opposite Carnegie Hall. Hirtenstein admits (as Barnett has told reporters) he paid a construction worker $200 to take his iPad to the 47th-floor unit he’d agreed to buy and shoot a 10-second video of its view of Central Park. That’s where the stories diverge.
Barnett says he returned Hirtenstein’s contract and deposit as a matter of principle, deeming him a less than ideal buyer.
“He likes to say he rejected me. He’s completely off base,” counters the wiry, handsome Hirtenstein. “I’d asked to go up [to see the unit]. They wouldn’t let me. You want me to spend $16 million without seeing it?”
After the iPad play, Hirtenstein went to his One57 saleswoman to complain that his “unobstructed” view was blocked by the Essex House, but all she cared about was how he got the video. “I said, ‘We gotta talk price,’ ” he continues. Barnett demanded an apology. “My lawyer put them on notice,” says Hirtenstein, who wanted his deposit back.
“All I was trying to do was be an informed, intelligent buyer. Apparently, that doesn’t sit well with Mr. Barnett. That’s not nice.” Pow! “It’s not elegant.” Wham!
One York(left): Bought .6 million in 2009, MOVED IN 2012; 92 Charles St.(right): Bought .58 million in 2010, Sold .965 million in 2012 (
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One57 wasn’t Hirtenstein’s first trophy-home flirtation or his first real estate smackdown. For Hirtenstein, a young 49, property is a midlife passion mixed with blood sport. Leaning back on a custom-designed sofa in his latest home — a sprawling One York triplex created from five combined apartments — we discuss his real estate résumé as two workmen fine-tune a giant TV screen rising from the deck of one of his three vast terraces.
The son of an insurance man, Hirtenstein grew up in Peter Cooper Village. After college, he was living with his mother in Continental Towers, the 1975 high-rise condo on East 79th Street, when he went into insurance himself and found a niche selling disability policies to stock and commodity exchange floor traders. He got married, had a daughter and, in 1995, bought his first apartment in a West 71st Street townhouse for $585,000. The violinist Itzhak Perlman lived behind him. “I would ask him to keep it down. I was trying to listen to Green Day.”
He segued into telecommunications after realizing he could sell discount dedicated phone lines linking traders to big customers. At 28, his business netted $30,000 monthly, and he started adding floors to his apartment. By 38, he’d bought his first trophy home, a $5.2 million three-bedroom on 2.6 acres on Ocean Road in Bridgehampton — even though 9/11 had caused the loss of his third-biggest corporate customer, Cantor Fitzgerald, and derailed a potential sale of his company. Three years later, he did sell it to a JPMorgan Chase private equity fund, retaining a stake that still pays the bills on his houses and his yacht.
Even before that, Hirtenstein planned to move up in the world, literally, buying a four-bedroom on the 76th floor of the north tower at the then-new Time Warner Center. The condo, with a terrace overlooking Central Park, cost $15.7 million. After developer Steve Ross refused to toss a coin as part of their negotiation over the price, Hirtenstein says, his broker saved the deal by giving up part of her commission. But a week before starting to renovate, he realized his wife didn’t want to raise their daughter there.
That led to another contretemps, this time with Jay-Z, who agreed to rent it for a year for $480,000 up front (“I don’t wanna chase a rapper for money,” says Hirtenstein) but then balked at renewal terms. “He lawyers up on me,” Hirtenstein marvels — and they had a screaming row. Shades of Gary Barnett: Hirtenstein told Hova to hit the road and wired back money. He later made a big profit when he sold the condo to Internet billionaire Todd Wagner for $27 million.
Along the way, Hirtenstein bought houses in Utah (“I spent eight days there last year; what a waste”) and the Hollywood Hills, a Setai condo in Miami, beachfront lots in Sagaponack that inspired an ongoing feud with a partner in the deal, a Flatiron loft and an East 11th Street development site that caused another tiff with another partner — but netted a $5 million-plus profit and the promise of an apartment at builder’s cost once it’s finished.
His next Manhattan purchase was pure serendipity. He and his wife had separated and he’d moved to a $20,000-a-month, three-bedroom, 67th-floor rental at the Park Imperial on Broadway and 56th Street. “It’s the best building no one talks about,” he says. “Better views than Time Warner. You brought a girl back there: panties off.” One of the girls he dated worked for a foundation in a 19th-century mansion on Gramercy Park South. When he met her there for their first date, she mentioned it was for sale and he bought it on the spot for $14.5 million. After a spurned offer from an unidentified Russian and flirtations with the soon-to-be-jailed swindler Raffaello Follieri and Sarah Jessica Parker, he made a drama-free sale to Colombian aviation and brewery heir Andres Santo Domingo and walked away with a $4 million profit.
Hirtenstein’s next three moves brought the drama back big time. He finally bought his One York triplex for $17.16 million in 2009 after suing the developer, and while he was re-negotiating that deal rented a loft at 25 Bond St. But when his new fiancée came home early from a Hamptons weekend and found their decorator and his boyfriend in flagrante delicto in one of the bedrooms, she wanted to move out immediately. A lawsuit followed, of course.
Luckily, Hirtenstein had just outbid another buyer for a townhouse at 92 Charles St. for $13.58 million, so they moved there while One York worked itself out. “I don’t need more real estate,” Hirtenstein remembers thinking. “But, you know what? I don’t need a job, and it’s a great house. If something’s really nice, you can make money.” Indeed, this April, he sold 92 Charles — to the buyer he previously outbid — for a nearly $5.5 million profit.
Michael Gross is writing a book for Free Press about 15 Central Park West.