THE BOSS: Michael White made friends on TV show. (CBS)
Tommy Hilfiger has grand taste when it comes to real estate.
Spies spotted the fashion designer at the sales office of One57, which — as we were the first to report — put preconstruction penthouses on the market at prices starting at $98.5 million and now up to $110 million.
Although those penthouses are still on the market, other pricey units in the building have sold, even though the building isn’t scheduled to be finished until 2013. Hilfiger, we hear, looked at plans for a full-floor unit in the $20 million-plus range.
Two Russians recently signed contracts for full-floors. One57 buyers tend to be foreigners and corporations who are buying as investments, insiders say.
Hilfiger owns a condo at the Plaza, which he bought for about $25 million and once unsuccessfully tried to flip for $50 million. Featured in shelter and fashion magazines, the fabulous layout includes fashionable art by Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Richard Prince and JeanMichel Basquiat. There are also iconic touches, like an “Eloise” child’s room hand-painted by Eloise’s original illustrator, Hilary Knight, and family portraits by Annie Leibovitz.
White house
Michael White, chairman, president and CEO of DirecTV, just purchased a $5.8 million apartment at 200 E. 66th St., the big condo conversion known as Manhattan House.
The well-mannered White, a former PepsiCo executive, was once dubbed “by far the most likable boss” on CBS’s reality show “Undercover Boss.”
His new home is a four-bedroom, four-bathroom, 3,156-square-foot unit with a media room, formal dining room, windowed chef’s kitchen and woodburning fireplace. An entry foyer leads into a large living and dining area with oversized windows that overlook the building’s garden.
White’s broker, Rick Kelly of Prudential Douglas Elliman, declined to comment.
Stribling scion’s first buy
Elizabeth Ann Stribling-Kivlan — daughter of the Stribling brokerage firm’s founder, Elizabeth Stribling — is part of a real estate dynasty. And Stribling-Kivlan, who’s known as “EA,” is involved with the family business as director of marketing and business development for Stribling. But even though her family’s brokerage specializes in high-end sales, Stribling-Kivlan has always been a renter — until now.
She still lives in a Manhattan rental, but she is now the owner of a country home. Stribling-Kivlan just purchased her first house on Falls Road in Roxbury, Conn. She bought the stately Colonial, built in 1966, for $521,000. The Litchfield County home is a 2,368-square-foot, three-bedroom, three-bathroom residence that sits on 2.34 acres.
We hear that her new neighbor will be Louise Sunshine, the grande dame of real estate marketing. Sunshine is now working on the Sunshine Select Residences at the W New York Downtown in the Financial District, where Knicks guard Jeremy Lin recently rented a unit.
Simply the West
A mystery buyer just closed on the top floor of Extell Development’s 535 West End Ave. for $22 million.
Yes, that’s the same unit that Matt Damon looked at twice. The actor first saw it when it was part of a two-story, 14,000-square-foot unit that was listed at $37.5 million and perhaps out of his price range. The second time Damon looked was when the unit was split into two condos.
Damon’s bid on the 7,000-square-foot top floor was surpassed by the mystery buyer, who swooped in at the last minute. The floor below it is still available.
Billionaire trade
Private-equity billionaire Marc Rowan, co-founder of Apollo Global Management, has sold his oceanfront Hamptons mansion to Carlos Alejandro Pérez Dávila, a managing director of Quadrant Capital Advisors.
Rowan’s residence, on Meadow Lane in Southampton, was listed for $34 million but closed for $28.5 million.
The six-bedroom, 9,000-square-foot home includes floating staircases, a library, a formal dining room and a master suite with an oceanfront balcony and a fireplace. Sitting on 2.3 acres, the house comes with formal gardens, a heated pool surrounded by limestone terraces, a covered outdoor dining area and a private path to the ocean.
Dávila is part of Colombia’s Santo Domingo clan, whose billionaire patriarch, Julio Mario Santo Domingo, died last year.
We hear . . .
That the late Teddy Forstmann’s bachelor pad on East 70th Street, which was listed for $36 million, is in contract for more than $40 million after being on the market just a week
Sighting
Halstead Property’s Robin Schneiderman at Lavo, powwowing with LA broker pal Josh Altman from Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing.”