The Atelier’s $85M ‘penthouse’ is off the market after scrutiny

It seems that one of the city’s priciest apartments for sale was never actually a home at all. The 45th-floor aerie at the Atelier, located at 635 West 42nd Street, was previously listed for $85 million; it’s now off the market after the New York Post revealed that the listing was made up of “roughly a dozen occupied apartments,” none of which was the advertised 15,000-square-foot penthouse.

The Post has the full details, but here’s the TL;DR version: Back in 2013, the 45th-floor condo first hit the market for an exorbitant $85 million, a price tag that hasn’t budged ever since. The condo supposedly came with a bevy of over-the-top perks—enough to garner a recent profile in the New York Times—including two Rolls Royce Phantoms and a Lamborghini, a year of courtside season tickets to the Brooklyn Nets, a Hamptons summer rental, and, apparently two seats on a future flight to space.

But that, it seems, may have been a fabrication. At least nine apartments on the 45th floor have sold in the past few years, according to public records—the priciest of those went for just under $2 million—and as the Post points out, an apartment on that level is currently listed for $1.895 million. The supposed perks of the penthouse, meanwhile, sound impressive in theory, but it’s less clear how they would be delivered to a potential buyer. The Aterlier’s condo board president, Dan Neiditch—who’s also the owner of the brokerage River 2 River Realty, which markets many of the building’s units—would not disclose details of the spaceflight, for instance, to the Times.

Amid this scrutiny, the listing disappeared from StreetEasy sometime in the past few days.

The building, and Neiditch, are also under scrutiny regarding an illegal Airbnb scheme. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement is investigating the issue, which first came to light in October after 27 violations were issued over illegal short-term rentals. According to reports, River 2 River Realty managed some of the apartments cited by OSE.