‘I’m shocked they got $30 million for it’

REAL ESTATE • Pricing Predicaments

A sure sign of true trophy properties is the way their asking prices look like they’re plucked from the sky: Where did they come up with that number? 

The question particularly bears asking as regards the seven-story penthouse (aka "The Pinnacle") atop the Woolworth Building. Built as an office tower in 1913, the building was far ahead of the office-to-residential conversion game when developer Alchemy Group bought the top 30 floors a decade ago and began to turn them residential. The penthouse hit the market in 2014 priced at $110 million, a record ask for the time.

The space — seven stories of open, undeveloped verticality — didn’t find a buyer initially, or anytime during its first nine years on market. Along the way, the price got cut, checking in at $59 million in 2019. It finally traded last week for $30 million, a price Alchemy’s president told the WSJ (with admirable honesty) was, “on the surface, not a good number.”

Why the massive spread between listing and close? “They were delusional. It’s just seven levels of tiny floor plates,” an insider told FOUND. In other words: the buyer first must develop the space (perhaps along the lines of the rendering above), then live inside the equivalent of a seven-story walkup. Added our source, “I’m shocked they got $30 million for it.”

→ Woolworth Tower Residences (Tribeca), 2 Park Place. Developer: Alchemy Group. Sales: Sotheby’s International Realty.