Don't feel sorry for Paula Zahn. Not because her marriage is dissolving or she might be imminently forced out of CNN or because her legs are no longer and tan and supple as they used to be.
Because no matter what you think, Paula's life is still much, much better than yours.
Take, for example, your apartment. You know that spacious 2-bedroom loft in the West Village you've had your eye on for a while now? Well, forget it. You're living in a closet-sized Murray Hill—that's, ironically, closet-less—and paying $1250/month for the privilege of splitting an 850 square-foot dump above "Curry In A Hurry" with an out-of-work aerobics instructor and her impossibly hairy boyfriend.
Meanwhile, here's where Zahn has been "roughing it" since ditching that dreary, red hawk-infested co-op on Fifth avenue.
Tishman Speyer unloading old New York Times building for $500 million, three times what it paid in '04, or $666.66 per square foot. "That's the devil's math," says one imaginary insider.
From Wikipedia's entry on "LoHo":
LoHo (an acronym for "Lower Houston Street") is one proposed name of a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan[1][2]. It encompasses a section of the Lower East Side south of Houston Street, from Chrystie Street on the at the western point, to the FDR Drive at the Eastern point stretching to the East River line at South Street.
From Wikipedia's list of "Articles for deletion":
Delete WP:N/WP:NEO - Deals with a proposed name for a neighborhood that has not become widely used except as novelty or in reference to its namesake realty firm. None of the sources given has verified that LoHo is anything more than a marketing effort by a realty firm or that the name has taken hold as the name of a neighborhood.
From Real Estate Marketer's Guide to Manhattan: "Make shit up. The clientèle willing to pay $1.8 million for a studio that faces a brick wall eat this up."
• MollyGood answers Nerve.com's sex-ionnaire, with great tips on how to make your sex tape Oscar-worthy.
• Because the H&M/Madonna collabo worked so well the first time, they're gonna do it again.
• Proud papa and biz pioneer Joe Simpson whores out Jessica for $10k to be filmed reading a tabloid of your choice in Blonde Ambition.
• Liz Smith cries for Dakota Fanning.
• Si Newhouse expected to continue the grand tradition of dropping major pink slip bomb after the New Year with the canning of former Vanity Fair publisher and current group prez Mitchell Fox.
• Tim Gunn may have to pull out of Project Runway's fourth season for something called "job responsibilities."
• CNN celebrates one year of discovering broadband video.
• Time Warner chief Richard Parsons dumped Warner Music in '03, but first he backed up the catalog for his iPods.
$bull; 666 5th goes for $1.8b.
Donald Trump is gonna have to try real hard to best this one: A group of Tishman Speyer-led investors announced they've agreed to pay Met Life $5.4 billion for Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, marking the largest real estate deal in American history (bigger than the Louisiana Purchase?). Tax revenue alone is estimated at $100 million. By the numbers, we're looking at 110 building, some 11,000 apartments, and 80 acres of land. Or, in relative terms: Tishman paid $5.4 billion for 110 buildings – home to some 40,000 people – which works out to 3.27 times what Google paid for a silly video website. Just to keep things in perspective.
METLIFE SELLS PETER COOPER VILLAGE AND STUYVESANT TOWN APARTMENT COMPLEX [MetLife]
There will now be one more pregnant lady (soon to be one more stroller) shopping at the Park Slope food co-op and picking up breakfast from Connecticut Muffin. But it won't be just any young, young rich couple starting a family. It will be the most photographed couple in New York these days. Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard purchased a four-story 3,600-square-foot brownstone on the north side of Park Slope.
Their listing—before it was yanked from the Corcoran Web site—described old-school brownstone details like original doors and moldings and a recently restored façade, plus “a grand parlor with floor-to-ceiling windows.” (Thankfully, those floors are pine.)
Then there are the fireplaces, seven of them, with marble mantles.
Michelle Williams, in her attempt to save brownstone Brooklyn once said, “My husband Heath and I moved to Brooklyn for light and space and air." We're sure Maggie and her husband feel the same. Light, air, and the lack of paparazzo. (Those other Slope moms will totally take down any photogs with their army of bugaboos.)
Park Slope Celebrity Tour! [Max Abelson, New York Observer]
Big shake ups on the eastern front. No, not Hurricane Ernesto. We're talking about the east side of New York. It seems as though Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village are being sold off by Met Life.
Obviously, this will mean that the residents, well-known as working class long-time New Yorkers, will lose out on their stabilized rent once the property is turned into luxury apartments. And the rich moguls taking over everything cool about NYC couldn't be happier. (We're sure neither could Marty Markowitz, but that's a whole nother story.)
“It’ll be the largest sale of a single property in U.S. history,” said Dan Fasulo of Real Capital Analytics, a real estate research and consulting firm. “No doubt in my mind. It’s truly an unprecedented offering and an irreplaceable property.
We think the Louisianna Purchase was possibly a tad bigger, but, whatever. This officially means there is no affordable housing left in the East Village (except maybe the projects down on Ave. D). And don't be surprised if within the next two years a Trump Tower goes up in Crown Heights.
110-Building Site in N.Y. Is Put Up for Sale [Charles V. Bagli and Janny Scott]
While the thought of sleeping in Paris Hilton's bed (with or without her in it) is pretty nauseating, we can't imagine what it would be like to live in Lindsay Lohan's vodka-soaked, powder-covered apartment.
Luckily, La Lo has never even entered the pad she's selling off. Linds prefers to spend her days living at the Chateau Marmont, sipping champagne by the pool and choosing guys off the rotating man buffet in the lobby.
Lohan paid $1.9 million for the 2,100-sq.-ft., three-bedroom pad in Sierra Towers, just off the Sunset Strip, in 2005 – but never moved in.
Instead, the actress, who has been filming Georgia Rule in Los Angeles, has been bunking at the famed Chateau Marmont hotel.
So why did she buy the apartment in the first place?
Well, we're sure she planned on living in her condo. But once she realized her Marmont housekeeper was dating her drug dealer, she just couldn't pass up the room service.
Lindsay Lohan Selling Her Luxe Digs [People]
It's tough to be an apartment virgin here in New York. Mostly because the act of looking for an affordable apartment will fuck you. Hard.
Today's Thursday Styles takes a good look at those poor suckers who move here right after college with dreams of Manhattan and no clue what it's like to find an apartment here. They also don't want to spend a lot of money, deal with mean brokers, live in Brooklyn, look at more than four apartments, or take a small space.
So while the Times has three pages of how Craigslist Craig will protect you from these terrible brokers and how first timers can avoid getting ripped off, we think our advice is a bit more applicable.
Move to Clevland.
Haute Living New York, the glam real estate mag for billionaires announced their new editor in chief today. We couldn't have asked for a better name than Lauren Price … the lady's got change in her freakin' name. But, we guess she has cred, too. Ms. Money hails from the elite lux pubs like New York Magazine, the New York Times, and Travel + Leisure. (She also served as a less high class, but very New Yorkey, stint at the New York Post
Haute's been around for a couple years now, and their recently launched New York publication is picking up where Andrew Essex's Absolute left off. And they've chosen Price to lead the way.
“A born and bred New Yorker with her finger on the pulse of the city, Lauren is a perfect fit to help with the launch of Haute New York,” Hotchandani adds. “We have enjoyed working with her over the last year and have always been impressed with her passion for New York's luxury real estate."
The very enthusiastic press release introducing a new person for us to take jabs at when we're sick of ripping on Jann Wenner after the jump.
CONTINUED »
• Top on the Magazine Publisher Association's agenda: figuring out how not to suck the life out of glossies. [FBNY]
• Should you trust President Bush or NYT exec editor Bill Keller? Well, it depends if we're talking facts or lives. [Slate]
• When delivering the news about Kenneth Lay's death, aren't the former Enron exec's ties to the Bush administration relevant? [Media Matters]
• Religion has no place in the classroom, the courtroom, or, for that matter, our subway stations. [Gawker]
• If coked up models can land lucrative contracts, why not homeless models? [FBNY]
• On Spring Street, a disavowed Murdoch son sells for nearly $15m. [NYO]
• It's easier to remember a list of celebrity fuck ups when they're put in a convenient list format. [AskMen]
• Sting will spend $30 million moving out of his Billy Joel's sloppy 2nd floor seconds to a real apartment. Though, it's right down the street from where he lives now, so the neighbors can hang onto their celeb attractig property value. [NYP]
• David Furnish shouldn't be too mad at Pharrell for throwing him out of a club … at least the rapper didn't look at him and say there wasn't enough sausage. [R&M]
• It takes a Swede with a set to accomplish what Americans have tried to do for years — jail Axl Rose. [NME]
• Ok, somewhere between being a former crack dealer and now pretending to hang his enemies, 50 Cent has to have crossed the line of decency already. [HipHopGame]
• Was Kanye West wrong? Does George Bush care about black people. [Jam!]
