A model co-op

Catching up on this week's New York Observer today. According to a real estate piece by Max Abelson, 21-year-old model Lily Donaldson bought a co-op on Avenue B along Tompkins Square Park for $2.2 million.

As the article notes:

Very blond, well-boned, expensively jeaned buyers have been pouring into East Village apartments for so long that it’s hard to find new excuses to complain about the area’s über-gentrification. But then again, it’s hard to remember when someone as upsettingly young as Lily Donaldson, the 21-year-old Vogue cover girl, spent anything like $2.2 million on a neighborhood apartment, especially one that happens to be as far east as Avenue B.

Her new two-bedroom place on Tompkins Square Park around East Eighth Street could be the most expensive co-op ever sold on the block, according to listing broker Danny Davis.

She has Brazilian cherry wood floors (“that glow with the setting sun,” according to his listing), two bathrooms with original pedestal sinks and cast iron tubs, a 40-foot-long living room with six windows facing three directions, and, of course, a dressing room off one of the two bedrooms.

On the downside, the building is massively nondescript and un-frilled, plus the apartment needs work. “I’d put money into it,” Mr. Davis said, “I’d bet she will, too.”

If you know the neighborhood, then you know the building. I won't be all creepy/stalky (creepier and stalkier?) about it and name it. Anyway. If she's paying $2.2 million for something that needs work and doesn't have a lot of amenities...uh, what will someone be paying for something new and pristine...? Plus, this just blows the co-op curve off the chart.

Back to the article:

The last sale in the building, according to city records, was a $650,000 deal just one floor down. That was in October 2004.

Meanwhile, sort of not really related:

Have you seen the window display in that newish women's boutique on 9th Street between First and Second Avenue?