Fancy Tower for Billionaires Revealed to Be Horrifying Hellhole

[Mike 03]

The Cut
Feb 3 2021
By Amanda Arnold

Since 432 Park Avenue was erected in Manhattan half a decade ago, members of the ultrawealthy have shelled out millions of dollars — in one case, as much as $88 million — to get their own luxury condos in one of the tallest buildings on “Billionaire’s Row.” But what was once believed to be a literal pinnacle of high living has turned out to be the most wretched of hellholes: The $3.1 billion building is falling apart, largely due to its unreasonable height and design flaws. And its billionaire residents — who are butting heads not only with developers but with one another — are dismayed.

This rich source of Schadenfreude comes to us from the New York Times, which spoke with the building’s engineers and residents and obtained various documents giving us a glimpse into their 1,400-foot-tall stomping grounds. In short, it’s pretty bleak in there. Among the building’s biggest issues is its plumbing, which has caused frequent flooding and extensive water damage. In November 2018, 432 Park suffered major back-to-back leaks — one of which propelled water into elevator shafts, shutting them down for weeks. The plumbing issues even prompted one potential resident to back out of a $46.25 million deal after the building experienced a “catastrophic water flood.”

And then there are the elevators themselves. Residents say they suffer frequent malfunctions; in one particularly horrifying incident in October 2019, “a high-wind condition” caused one person to be “entrapped” in an elevator for nearly an hour and a half, per a management email. Apparently, in a building this tall, wind-related elevator issues are not uncommon; neither is unsettling noise, of which residents also complain. According to notes from an owners’ meeting, eerie creaking and groaning noises often resonate in the apartments, and somewhere in the building exists a garbage chute “that sounds like a bomb” when trash is thrown into it.

What’s more, residents are now required to spend $15,000 in annual fees for the building’s private restaurant, which is run by a Michelin-starred chef, though when 432 Park opened, they were told this cost would be merely $1,200. And get this: Breakfast is no longer on the house.

The mood in the building could be described as tense...

Read more at link: https://www.thecut.com/2021/02/432-park-nyc-building-for-the-ultrarich-is-falling-apart.html

[XanaDUer2]

1. Welcome to life nt

[underpants]

2. When you live up in the air, things get squirrelly

Read this yesterday. That’s a lot of money for an apartment.

[Bucky]

3. I see no problem here. I see free market solutions to overcrowding

[brooklynite]

4. I think "horrifying hellhole" is a little hyperbolic...

[Mike 03]

8. It is.

But it's such a great headline.

[Croney]

10. And it was built half a decade ago! Wait, isn't that, like,

just five years?

[Hortensis]

22. :) Well, an hour-and-a-half trapped in an elevator might be a

lifetime in a horrifying hellhole to one person or an otherwise-welcome unpaid break from a two-job life to another. Who are we to decide for them?

[Maxheader]

5. well they wanted to live "special"

Tight bastards prolly used small structural safety margins

and cheap materials.?

[Mike 03]

6. Well, at least "you know where you stand in a hell hole" - Spinal Tap

[BlancheSplanchnik]

7. Bummer.

[Johnny2X2X]

9. And articles like this really screw them, good

A simply Google search for any prospective buyers and they'll learn the truth. People willing to spend $40 million on a condo have people whose job it is to do the due diligence. No way are those homes going to sell for anywhere near asking.

[JHB]

11. Silly residents, The Yardstick is not for living in,...

...is for laundering money. You not supposed to really live there.

[Rorey]

12. I'm happy to be where I am

Just reading about this place gives me anxiety.

[hatrack]

13. Welcome To Karen Tower!

EDIT

Now, correspondence between residents, some of the richest and most influential people in the world, reveal thorny arguments over how to remedy the problems without tanking property values. “I was convinced it would be the best building in New York,” said Sarina Abramovich, one of the earliest residents of 432 Park. “They’re still billing it as God’s gift to the world, and it’s not.”

EDIT

Abramovich and her husband, Mikhail, retired business owners who worked in the oil and gas business, bought a high-floor, 3,500-square-foot apartment at the tower for nearly $17 million in 2016, to have a secondary home near their adult children.

She was disappointed with her purchase on day one, she said, when she left her home in London in early 2016 to move into what she expected to be a completed apartment, and found that both her unit and the building were still under construction. “They put me in a freight elevator surrounded by steel plates and plywood, with a hard-hat operator,” she said. “That’s how I went up to my hoity-toity apartment before closing.” Problems escalated from there, she said.

Ed. - "Oh!! I NEVER!!! My brand new apartment 1,000 feet above the lowly plebians was . . . still . . . under . . .. construction!!!!"

EDIT

The tension in the building has been simmering for years, Abramovich said. “Everybody hates each other here,” she said, but, for the most part, residents want to keep the squabbling out of the public eye. But Abramovich, who, because of COVID-19 travel restrictions, has been living at 432 Park full time, said she wasn’t worried that resale value might suffer, because she didn’t buy the unit to flip for profit. For refusing to cover the recent increase in common charges, she said she faces $82,000 in late fees and interest — more than twice the median household income in the Bronx.

EDIT

http://realestate.boston.com/news/2021/02/03/432-park-ave/

[msfiddlestix]

14. Funny, I expected to learn this was a Trump/Kushner money laundering project

[Maraya1969]

15. Do you see how tall and skinny it is? It looks like it would be structurally unsound.

It reminds me of the Twin Towers but they were much thicker.

[Silver1]

16. And there's another one just like it

going up around the corner. Except this one is even taller.

It's a frightening thought when you read 70% of the building wasn't built to spec. So where exactly did they cut corners? Some of the answer in what's currently falling apart and and who knows what else is coming.

A few years ago one of the buildings on Columbus Circle started popping it's massive glass windows onto the sidewalk. The entire facade was eventually rebuilt. I think it's a Trump building now.

Real estate developers in NYC have a certain reputation ... not good at all.

[drmeow]

19. But, but, but

those wealthy real estate developers aren't supposed to prey on the rich, they are only supposed to prey on people like my sister - who, along with the other condo owners in her building finally had to get their state legislator involved to get some relief. Where is the honor among thieves!

[JHB]

17. So you could say it is a "Faulty" tower?

(Never mind, I'll show myself out the door.)

[nykym]

18. OK sending them

Thoughts & Prayers.

[sarcasmo]

20. This would make a good horror movie. 432 Park, starring Samuel L . Jackson and Brad Pitt.

[Withywindle]

21. One of these things is going to collapse someday

Doesn't need a terrorist act, just shoddy construction, unsound design, and the passage of weather and time.

[lame54]

23. Karma Tower