One of Battery Park City’s most eclectic apartments is for sale. The penthouse at 380 Rector Place is owned by by Isaac Gindi, the son of the late Samuel “Sonny” Gindi, who founded the Century 21 discount department store chain in 1961. The younger Mr. Gindi and his brother, Eddie, now own Century 21.
Since he mid-1990s, Mr. Gindi and his family have kept an apartment at 380 Rector Place, a duplex unit that boasts the unusual distinction of being larger outside than inside. Its 2,500-square foot deck (which forms the roof over much of the rest of 380 Rector) is slightly more spacious than area within the two-bedroom unit’s walls. The roof deck contains a large patio that faces west, south, and east, and also comes equipped with an outdoor hot tub and shower, as well as shade trellises overgrown with ivy.
The deck also contains custom artwork commissioned by the Gindi family, such as this mural.
Both inside and out, the apartment is decorated with items from Mr. Gindi’s art collection, including a large mural emblazoned with the face of John F. Kennedy, a bathroom wall embellished with a graffiti scrawl that says, “life is beautiful,” and custom cabinetry fashioned from Macassar ebony.
The asking price for the Gindi residence is $8,950,000. Even if you were to buy it for cash however, and thus face no monthly mortgage payment, the carrying costs would be considerable. Mostly maintenance for the unit is $4,414, while the monthly real estate tax adds another $4,917 to the ongoing price of residing there. This means that even a resident who owns the apartment outright will have to $111,972 each year for the privilege of living there. In a reflection of the slow-motion crisis facing residents of Battery Park City (where ground rent and payments in lieu of taxes are both rising inexorably), these costs appear poised to inflate steadily in years to come.
This dynamic may have been a factor in Mr. Gindi’s decision to sell his residence at 380 Rector Place. Under the current terms of the ground lease that governs property ownership in Battery Park City, in the year 2069 (when this lease expires), ownership of all the real estate in the community will revert to the Battery Park City Authority. For condominium owners (like Mr. Gindi), this will mean that their property is effectively confiscated, while renters will face the prospect of eviction. Both owners and tenants will be rendered homeless under this scenario. Although 2069 is still decades away, the relentless pressure of market pricing (which penalizes sellers and rewards buyers with discounts that reflect future risk) is already exerting a downward pressure on property values in the community.
The Gindi family as a whole is also reducing its exposure to Downtown real estate. In 2012, it sold a portfolio of more than a dozen buildings scattered throughout Lower Manhattan for $164 million, and in 2014, unloaded three more buildings on Nassau Street for an additional $46 million.