The Plaza and 15 Central Park West better watch out, because a new ultra-luxe condo is coming to town and its developers are already claiming they will have the edge with an emergent, but increasingly lucrative, segment of the residential market: the Russians.

Earlier this week, Lev Leviev's Africa Israel Investments announced that it had contracted Versace to spearhead the interior redesign of the Clock Tower Building and convert the former MetLife headquarters at 5 Madison Avenue into a 55-unit condo.

Versace, of course, ranks high on the list of residential amenities, but we couldn’t help but feel a brief pang of déjà vu.  read more »

The Irish equivalent of the Plaza is the Shelbourne Hotel, give or take a couple hundred condos.

Built in 1824, in a landmark building overlooking a park in the heart of Ireland's capital, the Shelbourne has had a long reign as what The New York Times called "the princess of Dublin hotels." Like the Plaza, the 225-room hotel never lost its cache with tourists, even as more luxurious competitors popped up and service started to decline--in October 2004, an Irish court ruling stripped the Shelbourne of its five-star status, and the hotel decided to become unclassified.

A few months later, Irish oil magnate/hotelier John Sweeney swooped in with a consortium of investors and bought the down-at-the-heels hotel for 120 million Euros and promised to restore it to its former splendor with a 40 million Euro makeover.  read more »

Management at the Plaza is paying a million dollars to an electronic-music composer, one Ariel Blumenthal, to create a two-hour soundtrack for its revamped Rose Bar (along with Frank Sinatra remixes for the lobby).  read more »

Jerry Kokes made his fortune selling boxing gloves. Now he's moving into one of the most white-gloved buildings in the city. The founder of T.K.O. and his wife Lynda have paid $5.4 million for a 6th-floor condo at the Plaza, city records show.

The couple are currently based in Brielle, NJ.

The Plaza is about as far away from Dennis J. Washington's childhood hometown of Missoula Montana as you can get, so it's a fitting place for the septuagenarian billionaire and self-styled Horatio Alger to spend his twilight years.

His wife Phyllis has paid nearly $19 million for a 19th floor-condo at the Plaza, city records show.  read more »

After enduring a high-profile lawsuit with the Waldorf Astoria and a stint at the Palace Hotel, Barbara Guthmacher Girard closed on a $4.7 million condo at the Plaza a couple of weeks ago. Though Ms. Gutmacher Girard signed the contract for the 1,760-square-foot, 18th-floor apartment over two years ago, she said in an interview recently that she and her wheelchair-bound, elderly mother may not move into the Plaza afterall because they had become so comfortable at the Palace.  read more »

Bear Stearns chairman James Cayne was in Detroit at the start of the weekend that saw the tanking of his venerable investment bank. Why? Mr. Cayne was competing in the North American Bridge Championship, according to reports.

Also last week, as the perfect storm gathered, Mr. Cayne closed on a $25 million condo at the revamped Plaza.

Camera-wielding tourists, a smattering of ladies who lunch, and a few nostalgic locals milled around the newly renovated Plaza Hotel this afternoon, two days after the iconic landmark re-opened following a three-year, $400 million renovation.

The Plaza’s new owners, El-Ad Properties, gave the famous Palm Court restaurant a $15 million makeover, and a spruced-up Oak Bar will open again this spring, but only 130 of the 800 original hotel rooms remain.

About 60 percent of the original hotel has been converted to condos so the public spaces of the Plaza redux are smaller, less gaudy, and as one tourist remarked to her husband upon exiting the hotel’s revolving door “kind of stuffy.”  read more »

Investment manager Joseph Stilwell has bought an $8.5 million condo at the Plaza, city records show. Mr. Stilwell is one of the largest shareholders of Cameron Financial, a U.S. home-lender established in 1887.

It might be a slight overstatement to say that asking rents at the Plaza have been cut in half in 2008, but, boy, have things changed since the first rental was listed last summer.

In September, Sotheby's listed a one-bedroom Plaza rental at an eye-popping $30,000 per month that is still on the market. Meanwhile, 12 of the 14 other rental units that have come online since August have languished on the market; and, this month, The Real Deal reported that Plaza condo owners have started to cut asking rents to spur interest.

Now, enter the the two-bedroom Plaza rental listed this past Sunday by Century 21 NY Metro. It's going for $16,500 a month. Granted, it only has garden views, but still... a two-bedroom at the Plaza.  read more »