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Martha Stewart has left downtown for uptown, and downsized in the process.
About a year after selling a West Village triplex, the home-decor doyenne and multimillionaire businesswoman and her daughter, media personality Alexis Stewart, have purchased a duplex on the Upper West Side.
The new six-bedroom home is at the Belnord, a full-block redevelopment project at 2376 Broadway at West 86th Street. The apartment, a 4,600-square-foot unit spanning the top two floors of the 12-story building, cost $12.3 million, according to the city register, which indicated the deal closed April 25.
The deed also revealed the Stewarts have been in contract since April 2023, about two months after they found a buyer for their 9,500-square-foot former pad at 165 Charles St., a glass tower designed by Richard Meier near the Hudson River that was a celebrity hotspot after opening two decades ago. Both Martha and Alexis signed the Belnord deed.
The unit’s seller was the Belnord’s current developer, Westbrook Partners, which took over the project in 2021 from HFZ Capital Group, a once high-flying firm now deluged by a torrent of lawsuits over unpaid bills and missed loan payments.
When the state attorney general’s office allowed sales to begin at the Belnord in 2017, HFZ envisioned getting $18 million for the Stewarts’ new spread, which has a living room with a fireplace, a formal dining room and views of both the building’s landscaped courtyard and West 87th Street, according to the offering plan and marketing materials.
But as condo sales slowed in the years before the pandemic, which added its own layers of complexity, the development team appeared to scale back its pricing ambitions. In recent years the Stewarts’ unit was marketed for $13.2 million, according to Streeteasy, before finally trading below that.
The 213-unit Belnord’s most-recent offering plan calls for a sellout of $1.3 billion, but because the 1909 rental turned condo is rehabbing and selling units as they become vacant, the process has gone slowly. As of May 6 the Belnord had unloaded about 50% of its apartments, according to the real estate data firm Marketproof, which added that sale prices there have ranged from $870,000 to $13.9 million.
The building’s own turn in the limelight might enhance its appeal. Exterior images of the fictional co-op the Arconia in the Hulu comedy series Only Murders in the Building are actually shots of the facade of the Belnord, a landmark.
It’s not known if Alexis, a former radio and TV host, will live in the apartment with her family or share the residence with her mother, whose primary address still appears to be a farm in Katonah in Westchester County.
Richard Ziegelasch, the Corcoran Group agent who represented the Stewarts in the deal, did not respond to a request for comment. And Douglas Elliman broker Maya Kadouri, who marketed the unit, declined to comment.
In 2015 Martha Stewart sold her multifaceted company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, to Sequential Brands Group for about $350 million but continued to be involved with her firm, which published Martha Stewart Living magazine and other titles. In 2019 Sequential ended up selling the intellectual property to Marquee Brands for $175 million.
Stewart, a former model who has branched into marijuana-derivative-infused candies in recent years, also posed in 2023 in a bathing suit on some covers of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue at the age of 81.
New condo sales have been a bit of a bright spot in a market still chilled by high interest rates. The median sale price for developments in Manhattan in the first quarter was $2.1 million, which was up sharply from the $1.6 million in the first quarter of 2023, according to Elliman data. But sales activity in the category slumped by 35% over the same period.
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C. J. Hughes , 2024-05-06 19:13:59
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