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\n For more than 50 years, the Pierre has been a place where rich and famous residents rub shoulders with celebrities, debutantes, and fashion designers. Now, residents are duking it out over whether or not they should sell.
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The Pierre has been a regular presence in the society pages since it opened in 1930<\/a>. Coco Chanel and Audrey Hepburn slept there, Elizabeth Taylor and Aristotle Onassis lived there, and Auguste Escoffier<\/a>, considered the father of modern French cooking, served<\/a> filets de sole in the walnut-paneled dining room. Numerous debutantes and society brides<\/a> have waltzed through its Corinthian-columned ballroom. But in the past few years, the elegant mansard-roofed hotel and co-op on Central Park has been making headlines for a less genteel reason: the battle over a potential $2 billion sale of the entire building to a prominent Saudi family, the Khashoggis. The move would fund much-needed repairs and provide a financial windfall for some, possibly most, co-op owners, but it would also force everyone out of the building whether they want to sell or not. While Manhattan co-op board fights are notoriously nasty<\/a>, especially in buildings where residents wield significant money and power, perhaps none have had such high stakes as the one at the Pierre.<\/p>\n A co-op vote on the sale is expected to happen later this fall. But some residents are already jumping ship. Last week, Michael Eisner, the former CEO of Disney, who owns two apartments in the Pierre and clashed with the co-op over a frozen-pipe fiasco in the past, paid $10 million for an apartment at the nearby Sherry Netherland, the New York Post reported<\/a>. The prospect of handsome payouts has been dangled to get residents to sign on to a sale, a tactic that rankled a number of them. Pierre owners, after all, number among the wealthiest people in the world. As Art Garfunkel, a longtime resident, reportedly said<\/a> at the annual board meeting last fall: \u201cYou\u2019re just talking about money. But this is our home. I love the Pierre just as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0Even though the monthly fees paid by shareholders for maintenance are in the tens of thousands, the storied building is now decidedly down at heel with frayed carpets and creaky, often broken, elevators. At this point, everything from the plumbing to the upholstery needs replacing<\/a>. Taj Hotels, the building\u2019s operator since 2005, invested $100 million in renovations after taking over but has been accused of letting things go in recent years. Taj has reported losing millions running the building, as did its predecessor, the Four Seasons. \u201cThe hotel when we moved in 43 years ago was a proud edifice,\u201d Irwin Winker, 95, who co-produced Raging Bull, wrote to the board last year, according to the New York Times<\/a>. But now the \u201clobby is shabby\u201d and \u201cthe furniture, second rate.\u201d<\/p>\n In recent years, residents who hadn\u2019t so much as made their own beds since childhood have been forced to climb their way home. \u201cI, too, have been using the dirty stairs, as the wait for the elevators is so long,\u201d one resident griped to the Times in October 2023, when two elevators went out of service, one with a resident trapped inside.<\/p>\n Shortly before selling her triplex penthouse apartment, Barbara Zweig, the widow of Wall Street financier Martin Zweig, complained in a group email obtained by the Times that she\u2019d gone to the lobby to change a $100 bill and found the front desk unmanned. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine booking what I assume to be a luxury hotel and finding often empty front desk\/concierge\/security areas and broken elevators,\u201d Zweig wrote. She ended up selling her penthouse to then\u2013Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, secretary of Commerce.<\/p>\n Things came to a head at the shareholders\u2019 meeting in fall 2023 when Lutnick, the largest shareholder, demanded changes. Early the following year, the board told shareholders that it had hired Newmark, a real-estate firm, to meet with Taj about improving the condition and operation of the Pierre. This shifted, at some point later in the year, to exploring a sale of the entire building after the board decided that Taj wasn\u2019t willing to invest the necessary money.<\/p>\n In 1958, the hotel\u2019s owner, Jean Paul Getty, decided to convert a portion<\/a> \u2014 or 75 rooms \u2014 of the hotel, which was built in 1930, into a co-op. (Hampshire House on Central Park South and the nearby Sherry Netherland, also on Fifth Avenue, had gone the same route <\/a>a few years earlier.) The plan kept 200 hotel rooms under a leasing agreement between the owner and the co-op and guaranteed shareholders an unprecedented level of service for their apartments: daily housekeeping, room service, and a concierge to arrange things when they wanted to buy tickets or book a shopping appointment. \u201cI haven\u2019t made a bed since I was a kid,\u201d one long-time resident told Vanity Fair<\/a> this summer. The common charges are, as you might expect, astronomical. Ten years ago, Zweig\u2019s triplex penthouse was paying $48,000 a month, according to the Wall Street Journal,<\/a> which included a dedicated housekeeping staff of two.<\/p>\n In May 2024, Lutnick went to Paris to speak with the Arnault family, who own the Cheval Blanc hotel group, about a potential sale, Vanity Fair reported<\/a>. He also met in London with the Khashoggi family and the Dorchester Hotel group, which is owned by Hassanal Bolkiah, the Sultan of Brunei. About a week later, Motasem Khashoggi, chairman and principal owner of the Khashoggi Holding Company, texted Lutnick to say they were interested. He also asked if Lutnick could arrange an internship for his son. Lutnick said he could. After that, negotiations kicked off between Dorchester, who would manage the building, the Khashoggis, and Newmark, which is owned by Cantor Fitzgerald (something shareholders say they didn\u2019t know when the board contracted with the firm).<\/p>\n Since joining the Trump administration, Lutnick has stepped away from Cantor Fitzgerald and the Pierre negotiations. But some residents are suspicious about Lutnick\u2019s motivations in orchestrating the deal: Lutnick bought the triplex penthouse for $44 million in 2017<\/a>, making him the largest shareholder in the building. But he never actually moved in, and the apartment needs work after sustaining storm damage a few years ago. (Lutnick bought<\/a> a $25 million mansion in D.C. after becoming Secretary of Commerce; he also owns an Upper West Side townhouse, a house in the Hamptons and a condo north of Miami Beach) If the building sells to the Khashoggis, Lutnick\u2019s cut has been estimated at $90 to $100 million, just a smidge under the $125 million Zweig initially tried, and failed, to sell the penthouse for. That is: far above market value.<\/p>\n Decades ago, Adnan Khashoggi<\/a> was one of the world\u2019s leading arms dealers, with holding companies that owned a number of luxury hotels, but more recently the family has not been involved in any high-profile international businesses, real estate investments, or the hospitality sector. According to a recent Vanity Fair story, the Khashoggis are mostly famous for their wealth. One of their most prominent public deals of late has been a $37 million pharmaceutical investment in Syria.<\/p>\n In 2018, a member of the family, the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered and dismembered in Turkey on orders <\/a>of the Saudi Crown Prince and prime minister Mohammed bin Salman. According to the Times, MbS would provide funding for this purchase.<\/p>\n The Dorchester Collection, however, manages an extensive portfolio of hotels and luxury residences, including the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Meurice in Paris, and its namesake, the Dorchester in London.<\/p>\n Shareholders will likely receive a hefty payout (one source told Page Six<\/a> it could be four or five times some buyers\u2019 initial investment). Everyone will have to move out and the 400 people who work at the Pierre will lose their jobs. The union would negotiate a severance package for employees, but many employees have worked there for decades and won\u2019t easily find comparable jobs. The new owners will most likely convert the building to a hotel condo where former residents could, ostensibly, buy a condo once the renovation is complete. But many shareholders are already in their 80s, have renovated apartments to their own taste, and like the building culture and the staff just as they are. While co-ops were the preferred means of residential conversion in the 1950s, today condos trade for far more than co-ops. Both the Plaza and the Waldorf Astoria, converted in the mid-aughts and 2020s respectively, became condos, with hotels on the lower floors.<\/p>\n Some of the notable people who currently have apartments in the building include Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Shari Redstone (heiress and former chairman of Paramount), Larry Ellison (co-founder of Oracle and current owner of Paramount), fashion designer Tory Burch, musician Art Garfunkel, Princess Firyal of Jordan, Hollywood producer Irwin Winkler, secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick, and media heir Austin Hearst. Burch has stepped up as the leader of the opposition, filing a lawsuit to get the board to disclose more information about the sale. \u201cI don\u2019t need a shiny new hotel,\u201d she said at a shareholder meeting this summer, according to VF. But the Pierre is a second, third, or fourth home to many of the people who own there and some are reportedly receptive to the idea of a lucrative sale.<\/p>\n \u00a0If two-thirds of the shares are cast in favor of the deal, the board will sell the building, with residents netting payouts based on how many shares they own. It\u2019s almost unheard of for an entire co-op to sell, though it does happen: in 2019, shareholders at 417 Park Avenue, a prewar Emery Roth co-op, voted to sell <\/a>for $185 million to a developer, who demolished it. Still, it\u2019s rare enough that when rumors started circulating that the Pierre\u2019s board was exploring a sale, the co-op\u2019s longtime attorneys told a nervous resident not to worry, according to Vanity Fair<\/a>: \u201cYou can\u2019t sell a co-op. Never happening here.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n