At 1,550 feet, New York’s Central Park Tower, located on 57th Street’s Billionaires’ Row, is the tallest primarily residential building in the world. On its 100th floor, at roughly 1,000 feet of elevation, a private club designated for residents and their guests, as well as a curated selection of outside invitees, is about to open its doors.
The 100th-floor club includes a sprawling ballroom, a restaurant, bar and a cigar and cognac lounge. Developer Gary Barnett of Extell Development said the club was designed to give all residents of the building, regardless of how high their own unit is located, access to the building’s best views, which span the city and encompass the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn and New Jersey.
It is unusual to have such amenities located so close to the top of a residential building, where the square footage is most valuable, but Mr. Barnett said he believed the club would significantly add to the value of all the other apartments in the tower. The private club’s amenities also include indoor and outdoor pools, a movie theater and an expansive outdoor deck, located on the 14th and 16th floors of the building.
“We sacrificed a percentage of the building to do something really special,” he said.
With 179 units, Central Park Tower launched sales in October 2018. Prices for available apartments currently range from about $8 million to $150 million, though some of the building’s most expensive units haven’t yet been listed. Mr. Barnett said that sales were slow for the first couple of years amid a depression in the residential market in Manhattan, but that they have picked up significantly over the past 18 months and have now reached $1 billion in combined closed sales and contract signings. He adds that some of the buyers have already moved in.
The priciest closing to date was the sale of a four-bedroom, roughly 8,000-square-foot unit on the building’s 53rd floor, which recorded for $50.02 million last September, records show. Mr. Barnett declined to comment on the identities of any of the buyers.
Here are some of the elements of the club, designed by Lauren Rottet of Rottet Studio.
The Bar and Dining Room
For the club’s private restaurant, a trio of Michelin-starred chefs—Laurent Tourondel, Gabriel Kreuther and Alfred Portale—have been selected to design a menu, which Colin Cowie, a celebrity party planner and the building’s lifestyle curator, described as “Mediterranean, with subtle French and Italian undertones.” The bar is filled with a selection of high-end liquor and wines. Mr. Cowie said the goal wasn’t to be exhaustive with the selection. “For me, there is nothing worse than when someone brings me a wine list and it’s 42 pages long,” he said. “Great style comes from ruthless editing.”
The Ballroom
The ballroom can accommodate up to 150 people and could be used for private parties or weddings, Mr. Barnett said.
The Cigar Lounge
Ms. Rottet said she designed the cigar lounge, which has a specially engineered ventilation system to reduce smoke, to resemble the interior of a cigar box. “I wanted you to feel like you’re inside the humidor,” she said.
Butterflies
A sculpture by artist Paul Villinski, named “Mistral,” is made from individually mounted butterflies and a hummingbird made from found aluminum cans refinished by the artist. Price: $16,000.