Erik Seidel (Serge Thomann/WireImage.com)
Last summer, when Dolly Lenz, the vice chairman of Prudential Douglas Elliman, took over sales at the Apthorp, the conventional wisdom was that the building wouldn’t survive the fall.
“Things could not have been worse,” Lenz says of the Upper West Side condo conversion that spans from Broadway to West End Avenue on West 78th and West 79th streets. “There were screaming tenants, fighting developers, no financing available. The media and competitors were salivating to declare the project dead.”
The building, one of the Upper West Side’s most regal structures, built a century ago and modeled on the Pitti Palace, had been flailing for months. Units were released just prior to the financial collapse — with asking prices around $3,000 per square foot.
Developers Mann Realty and Africa Israel got enmeshed in lawsuits with each other. (At least one dispute had to be settled by a rabbinical court.) And hanging over everyone’s head was the New York attorney general’s deadline: If the building didn’t sell 25 units by September, a new offering plan would have to be submitted. Only two sales had been made when Lenz, ignoring advice from her own family, took over.
And yet, the first unit at the Apthorp closed last week. By yesterday, the total number had edged up to 11. Thirty-eight units are in contract and scheduled to close in the coming months. Looking at her transaction details, Lenz estimates that the first six weeks of closings (many under $1,700 per square foot) will involve $114 million worth of condos.
Lenz says bidding wars even broke out for some of the units. Poker pro Erik Seidel won a six-way battle to score a three-bedroom with river views; he is closing soon. Two months ago, the building filed its seventh price amendment — and prices actually went up! The average price of the 40 units remaining is a robust $2,600 per square foot.
How did this turnaround come about? Lenz and her team changed the entire way the building was marketing itself. The previous marketing team had positioned the post-recession Apthorp as a bargain, where prices had been slashed. Ads were on buses and at train stops.
“What person on Metro-North is buying a $5 million apartment?” Lenz says.
The better strategy, she reasoned, was to present the Apthorp as an opportunity to buy something iconic, not something cheap. Another big decision was to offer units unfinished. The expectation is that buyers are expected to pour another $1,000 per square foot into renovations.
Six weeks after Lenz took over, the Apthorp beat the AG’s deadline. Lenz remembers a congratulatory call from Mayor Bloomberg’s office: “They said I had done a great thing for the city.”
Lenz adds: “I think they didn’t even believe I could do it.”