What to know about New York’s priciest neighbourhood: Billionaires’ Row

When news broke this summer that Canada was spending $9-million on a luxury condo on New York City’s Billionaire Row for its consul general, it raised eyebrows and generated heated debate in Parliament.

Trudeau government spends $9 million on luxury condo for New York Consul General

Here’s what to know about New York’s priciest neighbourhood.

First, it’s not specific to New York. Florida’s Palm Beach famously has a Billionaires’ Row, and neighbourhoods in oil-rich Dallas and the former Gold Rush town of Valdez, Alaska, have used the term to refer to pricey patches of real estate. Canada even has a Billionaires’ Row, on the north tip of Lake Joseph in Ontario’s Muskoka region.

It’s not even a new term. The Boston Evening Transcript of Dec. 22, 1902, reported: “I. Townsend Burden of New York will build a costly mansion one block north of Andrew Carnegie’s house in Billionaire Row, New York. It will front on the south side of Ninety-Second street, near Perry Belmont’s four valuable lots of vacant land.” Note the singular “Billionaire” and the location, midway along Central Park.

New York’s modern Billionaire’s Row is a cluster of buildings at the south end of Central Park, many of them on West 57th Street, which is just two blocks south of the park.

Several of the buildings, including 111 West 57th Street, home of Canada’s consul general, are classed as super-tall buildings, meaning they are higher than 300 metres. At 435 metres, 111 West 57th is almost as high at the topmost observation level on the CN Tower. It and two other Billionaires’ Row buildings hold the record for tallest residential skyscrapers in the world; fourth place is Marina 101 in Dubai.

Most of the buildings on Billionaires’ Row are quite new, having started construction between 2009 and 2015, with completion over the last 10 years. The address 111 West 57th is the newest, completed in 2021.

That can be hard to say, given that some of the properties are bought through shell companies and by foreign investors, and many remain empty for long stretches of time. But some names have become known. They include:

Michael Dell: The founder of Dell Inc. bought a penthouse at One57 for US$100.47 million in 2014.

Bill Ackman: The billionaire hedge fund manager owns an apartment at One57, which he purchased for about US$91.5 million.

Ken Griffin: In 2019, the founder of Citadel hedge fund bought space in the yet-to-be-built penthouse at 220 Central Park South for US$238 million.

Sting: At about the same time, the musician and his wife, Trudie Styler, spent $65.7 on a penthouse in the same building.

Leonard Blavatnik: The Ukrainian-American billionaire bought a penthouse at 432 Park Ave. for an estimated US$77.1 million.

Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez: They were engaged when they spent US$15-million on a condo in the neighbourhood, but put it up for sale less than a year later; the relationship ended soon after that.

A student, eventually: In 2013 it was reported that an unnamed buyer from China had spent US$6.5 million on a condo at One57 for her two-year-old daughter, so she’d have a place to stay in New York when she started university in or around 2029.

Not Donald Trump: New York’s most famous billionaire has a property, Trump Tower, a short walk away from Billionaires’ Row, at 721 Fifth Ave. Relatively short at just 664 feet and 58 storeys, it’s not included in the tally of Billionaires’ Row properties.

Canada may have gotten something of a bargain, relatively speaking, with its $9-million purchase. The website Manhattan Miami Real Estate advises that properties in the neighbourhood can run from $15 million to $30 million, though it notes there are “some smaller units and, therefore, lower prices, making those perfect for pied-à-terre buyers.”

The website has over a hundred listings for properties, including Central Park Tower (tallest residential building in the world), 111 West 57 (the skinniest skyscraper in the world, just 60 feet wide and 1,428 feet tall) and 432 Park Ave., whose claim to fame is that it is “the only building in NYC inspired by the perfect square,” with 10-foot-by-10-foot windows throughout.

Real estate broker and TV personality Ryan Serhant has posted a video walkthrough of a US$13-million condo on the 62nd floor of 252 East 57th St. “Holy moly,” he exclaims at the 4,616-square-foot apartment, which features five bedrooms, six and a half bathrooms and a 38-foot-long “great room,” which most of us would call a living room.

“I can almost see the curvature of the Earth up here,” he enthuses, hanging out on the balcony and looking out over Central Park and also “at trillions of dollars in real estate.” He boasts about the “complete and utter privacy” to be had at such an altitude. It’s still New York, however; at the end of his video, he is briefly drowned out by a blast of car horns from the street, hundreds of feet below.

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