Fyre Festival promoter’s onetime Meatpacking District home lists for $7.5M

Billy McFarland rented the posh pad for about a year

By Amy Plitt@plitter Aug 9, 2017, 2:40pm EDT

The name William McFarland may not ring a bell for most people, but if you spent any time on the Internet at all this spring, the words “Fyre Festival” will. The so-called “immersive music festival”—basically, an excuse for really, really, rich people to party on an island—was due to take place in the Bahamas (on a “private island once owned by Pablo Escobar,” no less) in April, but things didn’t exactly work out as planned.

That’s because, as was revealed in the aftermath of the event, there really wasn’t a plan at all, despite the promises of luxury accommodations and raging with supermodels. McFarland, the promoter who put the whole thing together, has been in the hot seat ever since, and is currently out on bail after being arrested on charges of wire fraud. (Vox has a pretty good breakdown of the whole mess.)

So why are we covering him on Curbed, you may ask? Real estate, of course: McFarland was living in a penthouse in the Meatpacking District that’s being put up for sale, for a whopping $7.5 million. According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the sale, McFarland was merely renting the apartment—StreetEasy records show that it rented last June for $25,000/month, while the New York Times reported in July that he paid upwards of $21,000/month. (Sure, there’s a disparity in those figures, but either way—it’s an obscene amount of money.)

As for the apartment itself, it’s a typical pad in a new, high-end development (this one with the unfortunate moniker of 345meatpacking); there are fancy finishes, a “huge master suite,” huge windows, a private terrace, you know the drill. It also comes with access to the building’s gym and common roof deck.

So why’s McFarland moving? His lawyer did not comment to the WSJ , but his ongoing legal troubles might have something to do with it; according to the Times piece, he’s now living with his parents in New Jersey. (But he was allegedly “a great tenant,” per Christopher Riccio, the Leslie J. Garfield broker who’s handling the listing.)