Gramercy Park Hotel

• Reading about an overdesigned interior in the Upper East Side ("...built by bending plywood over wooden ribs and lacquering the surface, the finished wrapper creates a calm, cool atmosphere") is only shocking when it's an interior of a dentist's office. Actually, though, it's a teeth-whitening clinic. [See above] [Metropolis]
• The 9/11 memorial is finished! But not the big one. (This Anglophile memorial is the "British Memorial Garden at Hanover Square.") [N.Y.]
• New York City is getting greener by the month (although the city will probably be submerged in the Atlantic before one-half of new condos are environmentally sound.) This March, the USGBC is throwing the first annual Emerging Green Builders NY Career Fair. (Here's our slogan: "Be a LEED leader.") [Interior Design]
• New York has the highest concentration of Travel + Leisure's 2007 Design Award winners (and runners-up) of any metropolis. O Glorious Day! And yet the Gramercy Park Hotel only gets "honorable mention" for best large hotel. [T+L]
- Max Abelson
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This Thanksgiving, paterfamilias Julian Schnabel gathered the clan to his Montauk home for the feast  read more »

If you're in the market for a $10 million Ian Schrager apartment, you'll be sad to know that Icelandic billionaire Jon Asgeir Johannesson has snatched up the second-to-top floor at the Gramercy Park Hotel. (Click on the floorplan above to enlarge.)

According to the GPH Web site, the floor-through apartment has 2,988 square feet (there are also 738 feet outdoors). The library/bedroom and dining room both face the park--and there's a wood-burning fireplace in the former so that Mr. Johannesson can laughingly incinerate his extra cash.

He made that cash as a European supermarket-and-retail tycoon, but he may lose some of it to some big scandals: Click here for more.

This summer, a Wall Street Journal profile mentioned that he'd bought an apartment in the neighborhood, but didn't mention the price. According to city records, he paid the round sum of $10,360,693.75, closing earlier this month.

- Max Abelson

So what if Bill Clinton tied New York traffic in knots just over a month ago with the Clinton Global  read more »

• The posh Chapin School is expanding at East End Avenue and 84th Street (their science labs weren't nice enough, apparently). But Community Board 8 hasn't been so pleased with the Chapinites: "I just wish the school, trying to teach citizenship to these young ladies," said a board member, "would practice some citizenship itself by meeting with the neighbors." Who cares about neighbors? A brief visit to the school's website reveals, "Everyone at Chapin understands the importance of respect, consideration and good citizenship."(The New York Times)
• One would think a story titled "Jersey boy breaks into NYC club" would involve vodka-induced violence on West 24th Street. Instead, it's a business profile of Steven Pozycki, who has become "the talk of real estate circles" thanks to his "trophy" purchase on 42nd Street. Congratulations, Jersey boy. (Crain's)
• How to classify Ian Schrager and Julian Schnabel's $210 million makeover of the Gramercy Park Hotel? "Evocative, eccentric, eclectic, personal," is the wrap-up from Travel+Leisure. (Later comparisons range from "bordello in Paris" to "Citizen Kane"). How about this all-telling fact instead: before its renovation, the hotel had 506 rooms--now it's got 185. (Travel+Leisure)
• First came FoxNews' Greta in her $2.57 million penthouse. Now, a second penthouse at the glassy 1600 Broadway will be home to the $22,000-per-year Private Escapes Destination Club. But is Times Square either a private or pleasurable destination? Maybe so--because three other penthouses at 1600 belong to similar clubs. (New York Times)
Update: Tragically, the comment below is correct: Schnabel, not Philippe Starck, designed GPH... Thanks, Sean. - Max Abelson  read more »
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Former Apprentice contestant David Gould is on a one-man crusade to stop construction at Ian Schrager's much-touted 50 Gramercy Park North at Gramercy Park Hotel.

Plans are currently underway to build 23 luxurious condos, with a wealth of amenities.

In 2001, Mr. Gould—a trained physician who now works in health care private equity—moved next door into 4 Lexington Avenue, originally the Russell Sage Foundation. He gut-renovated two units, which were later combined. In addition, Mr. Gould had one of only a few terraces in the building, and greatly enjoyed his view.

"I look directly at the hyphen of the Gramercy Park Hotel, above which is a whole lot of air and sunlight," said Mr. Gould. "And you can even see the top of the buildings across the park." But then came the jackhammers, and the unpleasant news that his precious view might vanish. "It wasn't until recently that we realized that middle section was going to be built way, way up." So, Mr. Gould began researching, and found a 1929 agreement buried in the footnote of a Landmarks report.

"In 1929, when the annex to our building was being built, around the same time an addition to the Gramercy Park Hotel was being built," said Mr. Gould, "there was an agreement made between the two buildings, basically protecting that air space between the middle connecting section."

However, that agreement, which appears to have been only valid until 1953, was no smoking gun. Regardless, Mr. Gould began delivering documents to his co-op board, who had no idea that any agreement once existed between the two buildings.

Representatives from 50 Gramercy Park North have not yet responded to these claims. So, does the same guy who wanted to follow in Mr. Trump's footsteps, have second thoughts about development?

"I'm not anti-progress or anything like that, it's just that the building of this middle section will take away from existing air space, sunlight, and air flow, and certainly violates the spirit of the old agreement, if not the letter or the old agreement," said Mr. Gould.

Meanwhile, the luxurious residence continues skyward.  read more »

-Michael Calderone