Just seven months after the Zeckendorfs broke ground on the long-stalled 50 United Nations Plaza condominiums, the developers have topped out the highly anticipated project. Workers are set to lay the last concrete slab for the highest penthouse at the 44-story tower tomorrow, executives told an audience of brokers, construction workers and reporters assembled at a ceremony on the 34th floor this morning.
The Zeckendorf brothers, William and Arthur, who developed the 88-unit condominium in partnership with Global Holdings, bought the site in 2007 for $160 million. The project, at First Avenue and 46th Street, was stalled for four years, however, due to the recession.
A number of super brokers were in attendance, no doubt salivating to handle sales at the building, which boasts spectacular views of the United Nations headquarters, the East River and the Chrysler Building. The Real Deal spotted Jill Mangone of Brown Harris Stevens, who handles sales at 18 Gramercy Park; we were told Brown Harris Stevens’ Kyle Blackmon, who famously sold Sandy Weill’s 15 Central Park West penthouse for $88 million, was also in the crowd; and so was Keller Williams NYC’s Rana Williams, ex-sales and leasing senior vice president for the Trump Organization.
Prices will start at $2.8 million for a one-bedroom unit, and range from $3.6 million to $9.4 million for two-bedrooms, according to documents filed with the New York Attorney General’s office, cited by Bloomberg News in June. A duplex penthouse – one of nine, William Zeckendorf told TRD – will ask $55 million, according to Bloomberg’s previous report. However, prices may still change, as the condo has not yet filed a schedule A with the AG’s office, representatives for Zeckendorf said.
Sales will begin later this summer; units will be ready for occupancy by the first quarter of 2015, William Zeckendorf said. (That puts the building’s premiere only slightly later than the original projection — mid-2014).
The pricey penthouse, which should measure 9,700-square-feet, according to reports, spans the 43rd and 44th floors and has five bedrooms, two of which are for staff. That unit also has a rooftop pool of its own, reports said.
“This project is very meaningful to my brother and I,” Arthur Zeckendorf told the crowd. The Zeckendorfs’ grandfather, Trygve Lie, was the first U.N. Secretary General.