Over-priced and Under-loved, Luxury Condo Invades Co-op Country

To help you understand just how nuts New York City real estate has become, we take you now to the corner of Park Avenue and 85th Street, where a new luxury condominium has invaded the land of white-glove co-ops. 

This is no run-of-the-mill luxury condominium. This is an unloved, controversial luxury condominium that speaks volumes about the way we live now. The 11-unit building displaced a popular preschool, infuriating preschoolers’ parents; it had to be scaled back to meet historic district requirements and the objections of neighbors; it showered $25 million on the adjacent Park Avenue Christian Church; and it has been nothing but headaches for its developer, Gary Barnett of Extell Development Company, who has given the city numerous monuments to the super-rich. Among them are the 90-story condo tower One57 in midtown, and the 72-story condo tower next to the Manhattan Bridge, which has triggered bitter protests from residents in the low-rise, low-income Two Bridges neighborhood. 

Oh, and the new Park Avenue condo is also insanely over-priced. Although prices were chopped earlier this year, units still average about $4,000 a square foot, according to Extell – more than 40 percent higher than the price similar projects nearby fetch. “Prices don’t seem realistic,” Donna Olshan, the president of Olshan Realty, tells the New York Times. “Developers can try to market and throw parties and all kinds of things, but in the market right now, there’s only one tool in the toolbox – only one – and it’s called ‘price.’” 

Her assessment jibes with a new study by StreetEasy, which suggests that the recovery of the city’s real estate market since the nadir of the recession in 2011 has given homeowners and developers a sense of false optimism about the value of apartments. 

In addition to his false optimism, Extell’s Barnett appears to be suffering from an acute case of developer’s remorse over the Park Avenue project. “To be honest,” he says, “if I had known how difficult this would be, I wouldn’t have started.”

More than a few people in the neighborhood wish he had known how difficult it was going to be.