Music mogul Sean “P. Diddy” Combs has reduced the price of his 12-story, triple “quadplex” mansion on Park Avenue in Manhattan to $16 million from $17.5 million, according to reports.
The man formerly known as “Puff Daddy” paid $12 million for the building at 813 Park Ave., which was originally constructed as a five-story building in 1898 but expanded by developers in the 1980s to 12 stories. By the 1980s, another developer had converted the 12-unit building into three quadplex apartments, each with four floors and its own elevator off the common lobby. Combs presently lives in the street-level four-story unit, which includes a pool and a spa.
About a year after buying it, P. Diddy listed the entire building for $15 million and, despite difficulty in finding buyers, increased the price to $17.5 million, according to reports. Now, the price has been lowered, although some New York brokers have complained that the building’s ceilings are too low and the rooms too boxy.
– Queen Noor of Jordan has sold her home-away-from-home in Potomac, Md., for $10 million to Daniel Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins. The queen and her late husband, King Hussein, acquired the estate in 1984 when a land developer sold the property to a trust for their children.
The 13.6-acre compound sits on a cliff with views of the Potomac River. The property’s main, 11,444-square-foot stucco and limestone house has 14 bathrooms, a 3,458-square-foot recreational room, a turret and a row of pillars, according to reports.
The main house was then gutted and remodeled to resemble “a stylized version of an 18th Century chateau,” with a mansard roof, an oval foyer with skylight, curving twin staircases, travertine marble floors and a 14-foot-long marble dining room table that could seat 24 people, according to a local newspaper report. The fenced compound, which reportedly has an electrified gate and a pop-up barricade, also has an eight-bedroom guest house and a third house that reportedly is privately owned and not part of the transaction.
– A uniquely constructed, five-room triplex tower loft in the West Loop has gone on the market for $649,000.
The approximately 2,000-square-foot contemporary penthouse loft, which is perched above the converted, seven-story loft building at 850 W. Adams St., has dramatic east views of the downtown skyline. Other features include three balconies, a fireplace, a marble entry foyer, a private entrance, a third-floor master suite with a 10-foot ceiling, a pitched roof and a sleek interior design. The unit, which was profiled in the Chicago Tribune Magazine in September, was originally carved out of a combination of unused space underneath the building’s rooftop water tank and new construction. It shares no common walls with any other unit and has views in all directions.
Breckenridge Kling, who purchased the penthouse as a new creation in 1998 for $434,500 and now has relocated to New York, told the Tribune last year that he punched new windows in as many places as possible, giving the intimate unit as much light as possible. The first level — which in effect is the building’s eighth floor — has a guest room/library, and the second floor contains a kitchen and living area.
Listing agent Gay Roberts of Baird & Warner said the “tower penthouse,” as Kling dubbed it, is one of a kind.
Local news: Frank Thomas has lowered the price of his Oak Brook estate to $10 million from $11 million . . . A mansion in west suburban Wayne that was profiled here last Aug. 20 has been lowered in price to $2. 9 million from $3.6 million. The massive new home, at 34W226 Country Club Lane, has five bedrooms, a maid’s room, rec room, gym, wine cellar and home theater. Among other features are six fireplaces and a total security system. The 5-acre, gated property has extensive landscaping and a waterfall. Susan Kotsy of Coldwell Banker’s St. Charles office continues as listing agent.
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