Giggly Gere Gets Record $12 M. for Townhouse (with Temple)

This May, when The Observer reported that meditative thespian Richard Gere would be selling his MacDougal-Sullivan Garden townhouse at 184 Sullivan Street, we pointed out that he’d hit hard times. (After all, having a warrant out for your arrest for planting a kiss on a Bollywood starlet is a tad awkward.)

But things are getting better! The city deed for his sale was filed in city records this morning, and the sale amounts to a whopping $12,850,000--whereas we thought it would clock in around $9 million.

Why is that an astounding sum? For one thing, Mr. Gere’s most recent film grossed just $7,164,995 nationally (even though it cost at least $25 million to produce.) And more significantly, no house in the glorious MacDougal-Sullivan Garden Historic District, the row of townhouses that Anna Wintour calls home, has ever crossed the $10 million mark.

The lucky buyer is listed in city deeds as EDV Sullivan, LLC.

“The types of people that are going to come and live in the garden are going to be different now, with those kinds of prices,” association president Lisa Douglas told The Observer. “It doesn’t mean they’re bad people.”

After all, anyone who likes Mr. Gere’s rooftop Buddhist temple--called a “penthouse ‘meditation room’ made of wood frame” in building-permit records--can’t be half bad.