Madame Paulette, the world-renowned custom couture, interior and bridal cleaning and restoration company, recently opened its new flagship boutique, which was expanded and relocated at Manhattan House. Madame Paulette, the longest-standing retail tenant at Manhattan House, the Upper East Side landmark residential building and architectural icon, features new premium services such as personal attendants, a highly advanced lighting system and special wardrobe and home services.

The new Madame Paulette lighting system allows customers to view clothing in lighting that mimics different times of day. A black light feature with a magnifying glass helps Madame Paulette professionals see and study stains that are invisible to the naked eye. Reminiscent of the windows at Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue and Barney’s, expansive window displays have been installed to exhibit some of the spectacular new creations of select fashion design and luxury partners.

“We are thrilled to continue our long-term relationship with Manhattan House, which has been our home for over 45 years,” said John Mahdessian, president of the Madame Paulette Organization. “Our location in the most desirable neighborhood in the city has been an integral part of our success. From Manhattan House, we serve New York’s elite, including industry leaders, celebrities, socialites and corporations, such as Anna Wintour, Kelly Ripa and Bergdorf Goodman. This expansion allows us to offer new services to our high-end clientele.”

The new retail space is located at 1255 Second Ave. The space has a classic modern style with Madame Paulette’s signature color scheme of black, gold and cream throughout the shop. The flagship boutique includes features and finishes such as custom-designed furniture, Venini Chandeliers, Miele appliances, granite floors, custom brass and metal millwork. Customers may relax in the lounge, where attendants provide champagne and hors d’oeuvres. Large dressing rooms have been designed to accommodate bridal gowns and evening attire.

“Madame Paulette is not only a store; it is a destination on the Upper East Side. Manhattan House residents have easy access to the company’s world-renowned services right at their doorstep,” said Brian Fallon, a partner of O’Connor Capital Partners, developer of the Manhattan House. “Madame Paulette‘s expansion within Manhattan House is a great milestone in the continued success of our redevelopment process.”

Located at 200 East 66th Street, Manhattan House is an architectural icon originally designed in 1952 by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Manhattan House offers spacious, light-infused, one- to five-bedroom-plus family sized residences that have been restored and enhanced to combine the building’s classic grandeur with quintessential elements of 21st-century luxury living. Residents will enjoy unprecedented services and amenities, including the exclusive residents-only Manhattan Club, an in-residence hotel concierge, Exhale Spa and state-of-the-art fitness facility, Roto Studio-designed children’s playroom, and Manhattan’s second largest private residential park with landscaping by Sasaki Associates, the world-renowned firm that recently designed the 2008 Beijing Olympic Green. For more information, please visit www.manhattanhouse.com.

Madame Paulette

For over half a century, The Madame Paulette Organization, a third generation, family-owned business has been acclaimed as the undisputed authority in couture, apparel, bridal and interior cleaning and restoration – patronized by renowned design houses, such as Reem Acra, Christian Dior, Fendi, Oscar de la Renta, Ralph Lauren, Carolina Herrera, Roberto Cavalli and Vera Wang; celebrities such as Meryl Streep, Barbara Walters, Melania Trump and Bette Midler as well as revered institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of the City of New York. For more information, please visit www.madamepaulette.com.

O’Connor Capital Partners

O’Connor Capital Partners, founded in 1983, is a privately held real estate investment and development firm. The firm is headquartered in New York with regional offices in Mexico City and Los Angeles. O’Connor Capital Partners is focused on principal investing through private equity funds and concentrates its efforts on direct investments in high-quality assets in major North American metropolitan markets. Notable New York Metro projects include The Westchester in White Plains, Menlo Park Mall in New Jersey and Parkchester in the Bronx. O’Connor has participated in the development of high-end residential projects in most of the major cities in the U.S. and Mexico. Since inception, the firm has acquired or developed more than $15 billion of property on behalf of various investment funds, institutional clients, and its own account, encompassing all major property types. For more information, please visit www.oconnorcp.com. ###

The porte-cochere improvement plan was designed and developed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Sasaki Associates.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the restoration and enhancement of driveways, sidewalks, columns and landscaping at Manhattan House. The driveways and sidewalks will be repaved with the introduction of granite curbs flanking both sides of the new driveway. At the two main drop-off points, granite pavers will be installed and repairs will be made to the existing terrazzo flooring. New landscaping and lighting features will be introduced on both sides of the porte-cochere columns. The Manhattan House porte-cochere improvement project is scheduled to break ground in early 2009, and completion is projected for fall 2009.

“It is important to us to bring back the elegance of the original grand porte-cochere entrances designed by Gordon Bunshaft when Manhattan House was built in 1952,” said Brian Fallon, a partner of O’Connor Capital Partners, the sponsor of Manhattan House. “This is another milestone in the redevelopment, and we have assembled a highly qualified team to complete the Landmark-approved restoration in the spring and summer of 2009.”

Located at 200 East 66th Street, the legendary Manhattan House has been restored and enhanced to combine the building’s classic grandeur with quintessential elements of 21st-century luxury living. Manhattan House offers spacious, light-infused, one- to five-bedroom-plus family sized residences, and residents will enjoy unprecedented services and amenities, including the exclusive residents-only Manhattan Club, an in-residence hotel concierge, Exhale Spa and state-of-the-art fitness facility, Roto Studio-designed children’s playroom, and Manhattan’s second largest private residential park with landscaping by Sasaki Associates, the world-renowned firm that recently designed the 2008 Beijing Olympic Green.

For more information, please visit www.manhattanhouse.com.

O’Connor Capital Partners
O’Connor Capital Partners, founded in 1983, is a privately held real estate investment and development firm. The firm is headquartered in New York with regional offices in Mexico City and Los Angeles. O’Connor Capital Partners is focused on principal investing through private equity funds and concentrates its efforts on direct investments in high-quality assets in major North American metropolitan markets. Notable New York Metro projects include The Westchester in White Plains, Menlo Park Mall in New Jersey and Parkchester in the Bronx. O’Connor has participated in the development of high-end residential projects in most of the major cities in the U.S. and Mexico. Since inception, the firm has acquired or developed more than $15 billion of property on behalf of various investment funds, institutional clients, and its own account, encompassing all major property types. For more information, please visit www.oconnorcp.com.

The video speaks for itself, now available for view on You Tube. Experience 200 East 66th Street:

Article available at http://www.condo-living-west.com/nyblog/labels/New%20York%20Pre-Sale%20Condos.html.

That is the question that Dr. Jim Sperber, an internist in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., who is also a Grace Kelly fan and the son of a Prudential Douglas Elliman broker, raised in an e-mail message about her stay in the early 1950s at Manhattan House, the first and perhaps grandest white-brick apartment complex on the Upper East Side.

Now that Manhattan House — with 584 apartments, many with balconies, spread across five 20-story towers — is in the midst of a condominium conversion, the sponsors are celebrating Grace Kelly’s years there and have signed an agreement with the Princess Grace Foundation, to permit the use of her image in promotional materials.

But after learning of this development, Dr. Sperber, who has many interests, including providing medical care to an 8-foot 4-inch farmer in Ukraine, went through his collection of Grace Kelly books — assembled from garage sales — and pointed out that Miss Kelly’s father, John B. Kelly Sr., a three-time American gold medalist rower, helped build the Manhattan House.

Mr. Kelly, a wealthy Philadelphia contractor from an Irish family, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for mayor of Philadelphia in the 1930s, founded Kelly for Brickwork, which was a subcontractor on the project. Many Manhattan House residents believe that his company manufactured the distinctive white bricks used on the building, but Toby E. Boshak, the executive director of the Princess Grace Foundation, said that his firm was hired as a construction contractor to do the brick work and put up the distinctive white walls of the project.

As for the notion that he used his pull, as any father might, to get his daughter into a coveted apartment in the building, the evidence is far from certain. On the one hand, biographies detail a difficult relationship that Grace Kelly had with her father, and she yearned for financial independence from her family. On the other hand, family background was carefully reviewed at the Manhattan House and other prominent buildings in Manhattan.

Patricia Lynch, a former television news investigative producer for NBC Nightly News, who has lived in Manhattan House since 1975, said that when she applied for admission 25 years after Grace Kelly moved in, the building had a long waiting list and connections were needed to get to the top of the list. She said that she wore white gloves for an interview in which the building manager queried her about her parents and her family background, even though she had written two books and was financially independent at the time.

One biography, “Grace,” by Robert Lacey (Putnam Adult, 1994), said that Miss Kelly, who was in her early 20s, was “installed” there by her father in an apartment that her mother decorated. Another book, “The Bridesmaids,” by Judith Balaban Quine (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), who was a bridesmaid at her wedding to Prince Rainier in Monaco, said that the Kellys had given their daughter “permission” to leave the Barbizon Hotel and move into Manhattan House, but wanted her to find a roommate. The book also suggested that the apartment was decorated to the taste of Miss Kelly’s mother, Margaret.

In an interview, her first Manhattan House roommate and another bridesmaid, Sally Parrish Richardson, said that she moved in after Miss Kelly and did not know how she got the apartment.

The Manhattan House sponsors have commissioned four designers to create model apartments “with the spirit of Princess Grace,” bringing their “unique vision of grand, high-style living at Manhattan House.”

But by some accounts, despite her increasingly glamorous life, Grace Kelly’s furnishings at Manhattan House were, alas, quite plain. “The living room was without charm, character or gender,” Ms. Quine wrote. “It wasn’t ugly; it was utterly bland. Furniture, fabrics and colors alike were all resolutely practical. Everything seemed brown.”

In 1998, the New York Times wrote the following on Manhattan House, in a retrospective on this famous building:

“WHEN completed in 1951, the 582-apartment Manhattan House at 200 East 66th Street was a dreamy white Gibraltar amid a soot-dark sea of dingy tenements. The New York Life Insurance Company, which built the project, protected its pristine island by buying up the surrounding blocks as a low-rise frame for what is often acclaimed as a masterpiece in modern housing.”

Check out the full article, available here.

…

“The Manhattan House retail condominium is a strategic investment with considerable future growth potential,” said Brian Fallon, partner at O’Connor Capital Partners. “Its proximity to the luxury retail core of New York City and position at the base of the top luxury residential conversion development in the city make this the prime location for retail traffic.”

O’Connor Capital Partners successfully attracted new top-tier tenants, including Lululemon Athletica, a yoga-inspired athletic apparel company with over 80 locations in Canada, the United States and Australia; Staples Express, the United States’ largest office supply store and business resource center; ALDO, an international leather goods retailer; and Icon Parking Systems. Existing tenants include Club Monaco, a subsidiary of Polo Ralph Lauren Corp., and Madame Paulette.

Read the Full Story at Biz.Yahoo.com.

The commercial unit – which includes 102,842 square feet of retail, office and garage space – was purchased by Madison Capital.

O’Connor Capital partner Brian Fallon said, “it was always part or our overall capital and development plan” to sell the commercial space in the luxury building between Second and Third avenues and 65th and 66th streets. The state attorney general’s office approved Manhattan House‘s offering plan in August.

Bill O’Connor, a company principal and the son of founder Jeremiah O’Connor, noted that they have rented much of the store space to new tenants, including Lululemon Athletica and Aldo shoes.

Prudential Douglas Elliman Vice-Chairman Dolly Lenz, who’s marketing the 472 apartments, said, “The fact that the commercial space sold for such a high price shows that the whole building is a seller.”

Read more ‘Real’ Deal Coverage from NYPost here.

See the original article from 10/10/08, at http://www.rebusinessonline.com/news_archive/2008/October/10-10-08.shtml

The transaction included seven street-level stores totaling 25,000 square feet on Second and Third Avenues between 65th Street and 66th Street, four professional office spaces totaling 7,350 square feet on 65th and 66th Streets, and a 225-car parking garage on 65th Street. New tenants include Lululemon Athletica, Staples Express, and Madame Paulette while existing tenants include Club Monaco and Icon Parking Systems. Retail asking rents on Second and Third Avenue range from $200 to $350 per square foot.

Eastdil Secured represented O’Connor Capital Partners in the transaction…”

“New York City-based Madison Capital, a private development and investment firm, boasts a $1.25 billion portfolio of retail and residential properties in New York City.

For more information, see CoStar COMPS ID# 1594636.” For full article, see http://www.costar.com/News/Article.aspx?id=D874B37494474E84EDD7F7C0DE152E59