A developer’s beautiful widow who blocked Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich from buying her home for $75 million because she thought the price was too low has put it back on the market — as a whopping $150,000 a month rental.
Angelika Ivanc, an international jet setter and mom, believed that $75 million was too low a price for her co-op, which is across the street from the Central Park Zoo, even though that price would still set a city-wide record today.
If the triplex at 828 Fifth Avenue rents for its full $150,000 a month asking price, that, too, would set a new rental record for the city.
Actor/legend Robert De Niro is currently renting the city’s most expensive apartment — a $125,000-a-month unit at 15 Central Park West, otherwise known as hedge fund central. De Niro is there with his wife, Grace Hightower, until their own Central Park West apartment, which was damaged by fire, has been fully renovated and is back in move-in condition. Part of the unit that De Niro is now renting was once home to Alex Rodriguez (and, briefly, a bevy of call girls.)
But while 15 Central Park West boasts full services, including its own in-house restaurant/private club, a gym and a pool — as well as glamorous neighbors like De Niro, Denzel Washington and Sting — 828 Fifth Avenue is more, well, laid back in the services it offers.
The listing offers one single amenity: a doorman.
“It depends on what you’re looking for. They are very different apartments,” a broker said.
Ivanc’s nine room triplex takes up the building’s second, third and fourth floors.
It comes with five bedrooms and four-and-a-half bathrooms.
In addition, the unit has its own ballroom, library, sitting room — and, of course, fabulous Central Park views.
Originally known as the Berwind mansion, Ivanc’s late husband, developer Howard Ronson, dreamed of converting the limestone-and-brick building back into its single family mansion status. But stubborn owners, who are still in the building, did not oblige, and he died trying.
Abramovich also dreamed of transforming the Edwardian Georgian building back into a single mansion–until Ivanc thrwarted his plans.