45 Lispenard loft sale meets the past from the other direction

score one for The New York Observer
Netiquette requires that I note a factually correct Manhattan loft sale catch by The New York Observer, having snarked on their sorry ass ‘fact-checking’ only yesterday. Whatever ACRIS filters they use, they again beat StreetEasy to note the June 28 sale of the Manhattan loft #7W at 45 Lispenard Street at (yes) $1.98mm. This tip of the hat goes to Curbed for the late Friday linkage, but The O’s post followed the first record hitting ACRIS by just a few hours. PDQ!

how do they catch this stuff?
The O puts the social in social media, right? Not in a million years would I have looked at the names on the deed and understood what the buyers were famous for (I might have figured out the sell-side in a year or two):

Aaron and Ayla Wilhelm, who made waves with one of the original crazy wedding dance video, just bought a home for $1.98 million. That’s slightly more than the 1,398,714 people who have watched the video of their first dance on YouTube. The 1,800-square-foot Tribeca loft is located at 45 Lispenard Street. They bought the new pad from Henry C. Kendall and his wife Joan Krevlin, a well-known architect and founding partner at BKSK Architects LLP.

Just for fun, I spent 3 minutes trying to find the wedding video, without success. If one of you kids who is better at the intertubes and Utubes than this old ML Guy wants to post the link in the comments, that would be appreciated.

not matching The Peak, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding
The West line in the building is (as noted by The O) said to be “1,800 sq ft”. Check out how #6W and #7W meet at almost the same price, though four years apart and coming from different directions:

 At first blush, that looks like equivalent values for the West lofts at 45 Lispenard Street, now compared to running-into-The-Peak. At second glance, however, #6W in 2007 blows #7W now out of the water. Although there is no bragging about finishes in the #7W broker babble (which is “[p]erfectly proportioned”, and has “10ft barrel vaulted ceilings, hardwood floors, washer/dryer, amazing sunlight, and open north & south exposures with magnificent skyline views”, and is a “truly unique and special home”), it is marketed as done, as in move-in, although not done as in very well finished. (This may be false modesty in the marketing: the pix look pretty good.) The 6th floor marketing campaign was much more direct: “Unique opportunity. Open square loft”. If that was not a complete build-out than the agent did a disservice to that seller. (Note the premium over ask.)

To recap: a 2007 buyer was forced by competition to pay more than 10% over ask, closing at $1,083/ft, for the opportunity to build out this footprint (that is as built out in #7W; have you ever before seen a master suite with those proportions??), while four years later the You Tube dancing fools negotiated a 9% discount to close at $1,100/ft for that same footprint (sorry, but I have trouble accepting that Famous Architects built a master that is nearly 24 feet long but less than 10 feet wide; perhaps the architects slept in the square bedroom and walked down the hall to the long bath in the photos).

Same price, same footprint, very different lofts, 4 years apart. Comping is fun!

history is fun, too!
Some of you old-timers may recognize that this oh-so-not-prime-modern-Tribeca block (Lispenard just east of Broadway) is the legendary Famous Original TRIangle BElow CAnal. Cue The Wiki:

Lispenard Street residents likewise employed a City Planning map to describe their block.

Lispenard Street, a single block immediately below Canal Street, is wide on the Church Street side but is narrower at Broadway. Thus, it appears as a triangle on City maps, not like a rectangle as most city blocks are depicted. The Lispenard Street residents decided to name their group the Triangle Below Canal Block Association, and, as activists had done in SoHo, shortened the group’s name to the Tribeca Block Association.

A reporter covering the zoning story for the New York Times came across the block association’s submission to City Planning, and mistakenly assumed that the name Tribeca referred to the entire neighborhood, not just one block. Once the “newspaper of record” began referring to the neighborhood as Tribeca, it stuck. This was related by former resident and councilmember for the area, Kathryn Freed, who was involved in the 1970s Tribeca zoning effort.^{[citation needed]}

Thus, a real estate brand was born! But note that this story (which I have heard many times) is attributed to an error in the Old Grey Lady without a cite to a specific article, and to a former Council Member, again without a specific cite. I tend to think it is true, but am open to correction.

Because the real estate gods have a sense of humor, this "original" Olde Tribeca block is now among the more unfashionable bocks of New Triebca. Nothing stays the same, eh?

© Sandy Mattingly 2011