The opulent 32-story Mercedes House project on the Far West Side, mostly built for the well-off New Yorkers who inhabit it, is about to take on a whole new breed of residents.
It seems that Jed Walentas’ high-end property at 550 West 54th Street counts among its many amenities a state-of-the-art stable. The facility is not just for show either. It will soon be home to a dozen horses and 20 mounted officers with the city’s Police Department, the New York Times reported.
Walentas, the son of famed builder David Walentas, was originally going to propose that he and his father’s firm Two Trees Management construct a school as part of the project, the article said. The area’s community board, though — faced with relocating the horseback unit from Pier 76 — had something different in mind.
“The first thing they asked me about wasn’t affordable housing or shadows, it was if I’d build them a horse stable,” Walentas told the Times. “I thought they were joking.”
According to a review of other horse-friendly complexes in the U.S., the facility — equipped with 10-foot-high entrances, a corral and a special ventilation system — is the only one ever built inside an apartment building, the Times reported.
Two Trees sold the condominium portion of the building for $170 million to Invesco in 2013, as previously reported. [NYT] — Angela Hunt