Shocking Disrepair

Oh, dear. The NYT is playing to its Little Striver base again. No doubt, Graspy Little Judy Nathan is taking notes. $6 Million for the Co-Op, Then Start to Renovate is all about the "Sisyphean cycle of buying and renovating" "luxury" NY apartments. My favorite bits:

“If you spend $20 million on an apartment, you want it to be right,” said Edward Lee Cave, a high-end Manhattan real estate broker. “And it’s never absolutely right.”

(I wonder if any of your clients have ever asked themselves, "Why is that?")

But just recently, the couple closed on an Upper East Side town house — Madonna had considered it for her New York home — for which they paid $35 million. Now they face an even more ambitious renovation that involves installing a Russian bath and modeling a room after the Amber Room in Catherine’s Palace, once the summer home of the czars in Pushkin, outside St. Petersburg.
...
Mr. Rubenstein added in an e-mail message that he is also committed to giving money to charity. He said that he and his wife donate money to several local charitable and cultural organizations, and his wife spends time on Russian charitable causes.

(No doubt the Czarina would have approved.)

“I’m an investor,” he said. “I’m a capitalist. It was a good investment. It’s O.K. to take your money and invest it in good things. I already spend a lot of money on charities.” Among his charities, he said, was a program to renovate pet shelters across the nation.

(Because better pet shelters is one of the greatest challenges we face today.)

Mr. Rushmore and Ms. Kim did not grow up in wealthy families, which is one reason they say that they view breaking into the luxury-home world such an adventure.

(Really? I never would have guessed.)

The couple met when Ms. Kim worked at the hotel appraisal company Mr. Rushmore started in 1980 with $1,000 in savings. They did not start dating until several years later after Ms. Kim had left the firm, earned an M.B.A. degree and established her own banking career.

(Shorter NYT: all is well because Ms. Kim is not a trophy wife.)

Asked how he felt about spending such a large sum on a renovation, Mr. Rushmore said it was a fraction of the money that he gives to educational institutions. He said he had endowed a professorship at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration and a deanship at N.Y.U.’s hotel program and has made research donations to the Lausanne Hotel School.

(Because there is a severe shortage of well-trained luxury hotel staff, after all.)

/falls off chair laughing