Yes He Can! Deals Finally Start Closing at Shvo Masterpiece 20 Pine

When sales for the Financial District condo 20 Pine The Collection started in the fall of 2006, it was An Event. Part of that had to do with the housing market at the time, all bullish and booming, the condo towers sprouting throughout Manhattan tumescent monuments to money and a city back from the September 11 brink.

But it also had to do with Michael Shvo. The wunderkind marketer was in charge of selling developers Lev Leviev and Shaya Boymelgreen's 20 Pine, no small feat given its location. The Financial District, despite being literally the area around Wall Street, had never really appealed to Wall Street types. They tended to flee the area at dusk.

But some might be sticking around. The Real Deal reports today that the first sales at 20 Pine have started closing, and some include Masters of the Universe types. Christopher Beaudet, for one, a managing director at Deutsche Bank, bought Unit 2706 for $1.32 million.

Still, 20 Pine has over 400 condos and the sales slog under Mr. Shvo continues.

He launched it with a party in October 2006. John Legend sang and Giorgio Armani's Armani Casa was hyped as the tower's interior design firm. Also, Mr. Shvo formally introduced what was Manhattan's first-ever 24-hour sales office. Oh, those were the days! The papers and the blogs were atwitter with the novelty of it all--walk in at 3 in the morning and see a condo! A condo designed by Armani!

Eventually, construction hassles delayed a last-summer opening and a hefty portion of the condos remained on the market. A group of owners began complaining about their 20 Pine purchase experience via a Web site.

Mr. Shvo remained understandably sunny about the whole thing. He told my colleague Chris Shott, as part of a long profile, that everything at 20 Pine was going great.

"Last week," Mr. Shvo said in February, "we signed eight contracts, which, in a market like today, is a fantastic number. We’re going to start our first closings in three weeks.”