Now that the power struggle between Ian Bruce Eichner and his partners at one of the city’s tallest new-development towers is over, the developer bought himself a full-floor condominium at the Flatiron District building for $19.5 million.
Eichner closed earlier last week on apartment 61A at the Madison Square Park Tower his Continuum Companies is co-developing at 45 East 22nd Street with Fortress Investment Group and Dune Real Estate Partners, property records filed with the city Thursday show.
The developer, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, went into contract on the apartment on June 7 – the same day he settled a lawsuit he had filed earlier in the year in March against his partners.
The 4,663-square-foot apartment, which prices out to slightly more than $4,180 per square foot, was a source of contention between Eichner and his partners when they duked it out in court for control of the $689 million tower.
Eichner claimed the proposed sum, “including purchaser concessions, is at a fair price, well above the minimum sale price listed in the [joint-venture] agreement,” but that Fortress and Dune refused to accept his offer in order to force him into default for not meeting certain sales milestones.
The charismatic developer, who has a track record of getting his finger stuck in the door when hot real estate markets turn south, sued his financial partners in March, he argued, to prevent them from kicking him off the project and unloading apartments in a fire sale.
Fortress and Dune, on the other hand, claimed Eichner was misrepresenting his offer, and that he was actually trying to shave $2.1 million off the apartment through a closing credit and a work letter that was “more than five times higher than the next highest work credit.”
In court papers, Fortress and Dune also alleged that Eichner used his authority as project manager to get subcontractors to transform the four-bedroom apartment into a huge, 4,000-plus square foot one-bedroom for himself.
Trouble at the project cleared up, though, in June when Eichner landed a $168 million condo-inventory loan from Madison Realty Capital to refinance the property.
The 65-story tower, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, has both of its penthouses listed on StreetEasy as a mammoth, combined triplex spanning more than 13,000 square feet. It has an asking price of $77.7 million, or nearly $4,950 per square foot.
Douglas Elliman’s Fredrik Eklund and John Gomes have the listing along with their colleagues Noble Black and Ryan Stenta.