The Mark

Listings for the massive Mark, the 1927 hotel at 25 East 77th Street, have hit the Internet--and the penthouse is there too, which can only mean only one thing: After a long, strange media hubbub, it still hasn't been sold.  read more »

As the only hotel in Manhattan with its own "curator," it is perhaps fitting that The Mark has published a set of Tashcen-esque glossy coffeetable books "introducing" the newly designed, landmark Upper East Side hotel-turned-condo.

Such an expensive marketing blitz calls into question the media hype surrounding The Mark's renovation and the bullish projections about future condo sales there from the Alexico Group, the firm managing the conversion.  read more »

Russian-born and Harvard-educated finance billionaire Leonard Blavatnik has signed a letter of intent to buy a $150 million apartment on East 77th Street, The New York Post is reporting this morning.

"The price would be twice as large as the previous record listing in New York City, and nearly $50 million more than last year's sale of the De Menil estate in East Hampton, believed to be the priciest residential transaction in the country," Braden Keil writes.

Readers of the Manhattan Transfers column will know Mr. Blavatnik's name. Back in 2005, he tried to buy Mary Tyler Moore's 5,740-square-foot prewar coop on the eighth floor of 927 Fifth Avenue, but his $18.5 million offer was rejected by the exacting co-op board. The rejection seems to have stuck: the same thing happened when the co-op board at the San Remo on Central Park West rejected his bid to buy and combine three units into a massive aerie overlooking Central Park.  read more »