by Lisa Maysonet and Sheri Jedell

Sheri Jedell, Lisa Maysonet

Canine Frenzy at Downtown Co-op
Some rules are made to be broken, but not the house rule against dogs at 111 Fourth Avenue. Group Maysonet client Jacqueline Vittini was forced to sell her home at the cooperative apartment building when neighbors discovered her dog.

“I have this 4.5-pound Teacup Chihuahua named Bianca,” said Vittini. “She doesn’t bark. In fact she can’t bark; she’s too tiny.” Three-and-a-half year-old Bianca is trained to use a pee-pee pad, so she doesn’t need to be walked and doesn’t smell. When Vittini travels by plane, Bianca usually rides on her lap. “I put a little blanket over her and no one even knows she’s there,” Vittini said.

Vittini lived in the building for almost a year before her canine housemate was found out. She was on a rare trip without her miniature companion and had asked the housekeeper to take care of Bianca. Vittini still doesn’t know how the dog was discovered, but when she got home the board told her, “Either the dog goes or you go.”

111 Fourth Avenue is strict about miniature dogs. However, Vittini reports one former neighbor with two cats almost 10 times Bianca’s weight, “We’re talking about 40-pound cats. You can smell their litter box in the hallway, they reek and it’s gross.” And while Vitini herself is in her third trimester of pregnancy, she says her neighbors’ screaming toddlers are more disruptive than little Bianca ever was.

At their new apartment, a condo on Bleecker Street in a building with just three units, Vittini and Bianca are much happier. When traveling, Vittini swaps pet-sitting responsibilities with one of her new neighbors, who has four cats. Finally, Bianca has a welcoming home.

Roof-deck Delight
Twice as many home-buyers ask us for properties with common roof decks between June and September than between October and May. The shared roof deck is about the only outdoor space where most people can grill, sunbathe, and entertain when stuck in the city over a hot summer weekend.

Now there’s a way to have your own private roof deck, even if you live on the second floor. Anyone who buys an apartment in the 100-year-old building at 70 Washington Street, in DUMBO, Brooklyn, can also buy one of the building’s 22 “tar beach cabanas” for $200,000.

Most buyers don’t understand the concept when you first explain it to them, sighed Toby Klein, director of sales at 70 Washington Street. So, she takes them over to The Sweeney Building, which her boss, developer David Walentas, converted to residential condos in 2002.

The Sweeney was probably the first building in NYC to offer non-penthouse residents the chance to buy the cabanas. They have wood-plank floors, wood-privacy fences, and running water. And each cabana comes with its own title and can be bought and sold independently of the apartments. Klein believes their prices can only go up.

It’s the same concept The Maysonet Group is introducing at 101 Wyckoff Avenue, a loft conversion in East Williamsburg where the studios start at only $175,000. Pricing on the roof decks was not available at the time of writing this piece.

At 70 Washington, the building elevator goes right to the roof, with its views of Manhattan, the New York Harbor, and the Statue of Liberty. More than one-quarter of the property’s 560-sq.-ft. rooftop spaces were snapped up in the first two weeks.

When asked if she thought Walentas could charge more for the cabanas at 70 Wash-ington than the $200,000 asking price, Klein said, “David prices everything fairly; he doesn’t go for the last dime on the table.”

Velvet Ropes on Gramercy
The temperature is still rising in the NY property market. What’s the hottest property? The latest Ian Schrager production. Designer Karl Lagerfeld has already got his eye on an apartment in the Gramercy Park Hotel condominium project. Lagerfeld and Schrager go back to the days of Schrager’s club Studio 54, where Lagerfeld was known to party.

Schrager is now reinventing the condo-hotel concept with a beautifully redeveloped Gramercy Park Hotel for visitors and 23 condominium apartments for residents. The developer has big ambitions for the project. The British Press said Schrager wants the project to be “a traditional hotel, but a traditional hotel on acid.” His publicity materials go even further, claiming it will be much more than just a place to live. Instead, it’s actually a totemic home for “an international tribe of sophisticated modern people... [who] recognize each other by their sensibility and style.”

If you can make it past the velvet rope at the sales office, you earn the right to plunk down up to $16 mil for an apartment with white oak floors, cherry wood and travertine surfaces, wood-burning fireplaces (in some apartments), up to 12-ft. 4-in. ceilings. Every apartment also comes with a coveted key to Gramercy Park, a full-service lobby, and hotel-style services.

There are also less common, residential-style services: supervised child care and baby-sitting, pet walking and sitting, and laundry and dry cleaning pickup. And in case that new, flat-screen ONYX XVS Plasma HDTV from Panasonic needs to be hooked up, there’s technical support for computers, entertainment centers, and telecommunication equipment.