Steve Wynn All In At The Plaza

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Jul 16th 2010 at 3:01AM

Casino king Steve Wynn is doing a little high-profile buying in New York City. Josh Barbanel of the Wall Street Journal reports that Wynn has picked up a four-bedroom duplex condominium with a private elevator and a 24-foot-long terrace facing Central Park. The deal closed for around $23 million, slightly shy of the $24 million asking price. The WSJ article says that Wynn also bought all of the furnishings in the unit. It had been filled with custom-made Italian furniture built by Giorgetti by architect Gal Nauer who was responsible for the redesign of the Plaza's interior space. The nine-room apartment on the 20th floor of the Plaza has a circular staircase and a rooftop extension with a terrace facing Central Park. There is also a 27-foot-wide living room facing the park.

This penthouse has been a matter of some dispute. In 2007, the first prospective buyers of the apartment signed a contract to pay $31 million for the penthouse but when they toured the apartment in 2008 they were not pleased and filed court papers suing for their $6.2 million deposit. Court papers from that case disparaged the design of the unit referring to it as a "warren of dimly-lit and cheaply furnished rooms." A state judge dismissed the lawsuit last fall but the deposit is still in escrow pending appeal. "Unsold and unsellable" said a complaint filed in March and yet here we are in July and it is in fact sold. Should the owner, El-Ad Properties, manage to keep the $6.2 million deposit and Wynn's money, it would have pretty close to the amount of the original 2007 deal.

Wynn, who also owns homes in Sun Valley, Idaho and Las Vegas. He previously owned a unit at 820 Fifth Avenue which hit the market last year for $25 million.

Tags: new york city real estate, new york real estate, plaza hotel, steve wynn