Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• Actress Kristen Johnston has closed on the sale of her duplex at 296 West 10th Street. The two-bedroom apartment with a solarium and terrace, which Johnston listed for $1.795 million in June and went into contract to sell in August, sold for $1.7 million to costume designers John Orberg and Janet Kuhl. [Cityfile]
• Jamie Drake, the interior designer who counts Mayor Bloomberg as one of his clients, has put his 6,200-square-foot home in East Hampton on the market for $2.9 million. [Newsday, Mercedes/Berk]
• Armon Bar-Tur, a managing director at SafeHarbor Capital Partners, and his wife Rebecca, have found a buyer for their townhouse at 92 Charles Street. The four-bedroom home, which the couple bought for $6 million in 2006 and listed for $14.95 million in October, has gone into contract after less than a month on the market. [Curbed, Corcoran]
• Private eye Bo Dietl has gone into contract to sell his Manhasset home. The five-bedroom home, which the former cop and occasional TV commentator bought for $2.3 million in 2004 and listed for $3.295 million in August, is reportedly selling for "just over $3 million." [Newsday, PDE]

Russian Billionaire Buys Nets, Part of Brooklyn | It's official. The richest man in Russia, Mikhail Prokhorov, has taken control of the New Jersey Nets. The 44-year-old oligarch, who is worth $9.5 billion according to Forbes, signed a $200 million deal today with real estate developer/Nets owner Bruce Ratner that will make him the principal owner of the team, as well as a major investor in the Nets' long-delayed new home in Brooklyn. This makes Prokhorov the first foreign owner of an NBA team who isn't Canadian, and the "the only NBA owner who can dunk," according to Prokhorov. And the tri-state area now has its very own Mark Cuban, clearly. [NYT]

• Joseph Azrack, the former head of Citigroup's real estate investment group and now a partner at Leon Black's Apollo Management, has picked up the townhouse at 24 West 11th Street. The 6,250-square-foot property (left), which first went on the market last September for $17.5 million, had been listed most recently for $14.9 million. (Curbed has photos and a floorplan here.) [NYP]
• Tony Margolis, who retired as CEO of the Tommy Bahama Group in 2008, has dropped the price of his eighth-floor apartment at 1010 Fifth Avenue for the third time since listing it in January 2008 for for $11.995 million. The three-bedroom co-op can now be yours for $9.95 million. [Cityfile, Sotheby's]
• Nancy Rutter, a former reporter for Forbes and the ex-wife of Netscape co-founder Jim Clark, has paid $3.55 million for a penthouse apartment at 230 East 73rd Street. [Cityfile]More

Brooklyn's New Fake Holiday | "Spike Lee is organizing a block party-style celebration in Brooklyn to mark Michael Jackson's birthday. The filmmaker's bash in Kings County for the late King of Pop will be on Aug. 29, when Jackson would have turned 51." Naturally, Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn's useless borough president, plans to be fully involved with the planned celebration. He will proclaim that Aug. 29 is officially "Michael Jackson Day"—in Brooklyn, at least. [AP]

• John Legend has picked up a new apartment in the East Village. The Grammy-winning singer—who is still looking to unload his former pad on East 3rd Street—has reportedly gone into contract to buy a one-bedroom condo at 52 East 4th Street, where Moby owns an apartment, too. [WSJ]
• SNL's Kristen Wiig has paid $1.5 million for a director Alan Taylor's SoHo apartment. The loft at 476 Broadway had been listed for $1.75 million. [NYO]More

• It turns out Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick aren't moving to Brooklyn after all. Shooting down a story that first appeared in the Post, the Times reports that the mystery buyers behind the $8.45 million purchase of Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany's townhouse at 17 Prospect Park West are actually "a wealthy Google engineer and his wife," who bought the home through a company called Harken Pretty and "asked that their names not be published." [NYT]
• Philanthropists Amnon and Caren Heller Barness, who paid $12 million for a penthouse at Trump Park Avenue last year, have sold their former apartment at 1016 Fifth. The two-bedroom co-op was purchased for $4.2 million by attorney Peter Sloane and his wife, real estate agent Jaar-mel Sloane. [Cityfile]
• After more than a year on the market (and a $10 million price cut), the Sloane Mansion is officially off the market. The 18,500-square-foot home had been listed with Paula Del Nunzio for or $54 million. [NYO, previously]

• It looks like Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick might be moving their growing brood to Park Slope. The couple is rumored to be behind the recent purchase of Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany's Victorian townhouse at 17 Prospect Park West, which was sold to an LLC called Harken Pretty for $8.45 million last December. [NYP]
• Paul Kerz, the former CEO of Health Management Systems, and his wife Corinne, have dropped the price of their five-story, five-bedroom townhouse at 126 East 65th Street, four months after putting it on the market for $12.5 million. It's now listed for $9.95 million. [Cityfile, Sotheby's]
• Sara Levinson, the former president of the women's publishing division of Rodale, and her husband Charles Hairston, have paid $2.625 million for a three-bedroom co-op at 45 East 85th Street. [Cityfile]
• Hockey star Scott Gomez is reportedly putting his three-bedroom pad at the Chelsea Mercantile up for sale now that he's been traded away from the Rangers. Meanwhile, fellow ex-Ranger Darius Kasparaitis has listed his two-bedroom condo at 205 East 59th Street for $2.595 million. [NYP, PDE]

Your New Condo May Come with a Free Car | Real estate developers are having trouble finding new buyers, as you know full well, and the situation is particularly challenging for buildings that happen to be in slightly iffy neighborhoods. Here's one way to entire prospective buyers: Make an offer on a one-bedroom at The Sinclair, located on the edge of Crown Heights, and you'll get a free Prius as part of the package. Now if only they could arrange to have Bob Barker come down to give away these free cars personally, this promotion would be perfect. [Curbed]

Bailout in Brooklyn? | In 2005, Bruce Ratner agreed to pay $100 million to build his controversial Atlantic Yards on state-owned land. Under terms of a new deal that was revealed just this week (and goes to a vote tomorrow): Ratner will only have to pay the MTA $20 million upfront, and he'll get to spread out the other $80 million over the next 21 years. Critics of the deal are up in arms about the compromise, per usual, but there's some good news: Forest City Ratner, says it will cough up an extra $200,000 a year to stamp "Barclays Center" to the Atlantic Ave.-Pacific St. subway station. Small miracles! [NYDN]

An Airplane Hanger Grows in Brooklyn | Developer Bruce Ratner's plans to erect a $1 billion, Frank Gehry-designed Nets arena in the middle of Brooklyn isn't happening. Ratner is planning to move ahead with a new, cheaper design, one that will end up costing $200 million less. Don't expect to look as pretty, though: "Officials who have seen the design say that while it resembles Conseco Fieldhouse it also bears a likeness to an 'airplane hangar.' [NYT]

Tony Danza To Do Brooklyn Proud | Just when you were beginning to worry you'd never get to see Tony Danza on primetime TV ever again comes the news that Danza is back! Or he will be in the near future, and he'll be back in his native Brooklyn, no less. A&E has signed him up to do a new reality show, which is "billed as a real-life 'Welcome Back Kotter,' with Danza returning to teach high school students in his native New York." We can't say basing a program on Welcome Back Kotter is a recipe for rating success, although to A&E's credit, having Steven Seagal take a job as a sheriff's deputy in Louisiana for a new series? A no-brainer, clearly. [THR]

• Russell Simmons' brother Danny, who runs a gallery in Brooklyn and co-founded the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation with his brothers Russell and Rev Run, has put his 2,000-square-foot loft in Clinton Hill up for sale for $1.175 million. [WSJ, Corcoran]
• Raphael De Niro, the son of Robert De Niro and a managing director at Prudential Douglas Elliman, has a new apartment. He and wife Claudine paid $2.9 million for a three-bedroom condo at 497 Greenwich Street. [Real Deal]More

Not that you actually ever go there, but Coney Island will change forever this weekend when the Astroland amusement park finally closes once and for all. Now you can look forward to not buying a bunch of condos with beach views there in a few years.

Moped Madness | Outer borough trend alert: People in Brooklyn are all riding scooters! The Vespa dealership in Clinton Hill is raking it in, allegedly because the rising price of gas, cost of parking, and traffic jams are making car ownership less and less appealing. Plus zipping around on a shiny Italian two-wheeler is obviously the perfect way for Brooklynites to express their innate superiority to everyone. [The Brooklyn Paper; see also Vespa owners]

For Park Slope couples like Maggie and Peter, Paul and Siri, and Jonathan and Nicole, it was always such a schlep to go into Manhattan every time you were in the mood for some love beads, or you'd worn out your ball gag, or mislaid those nipple clamps. But salvation has arrived! Claire Cavanah, the proprietress of Toys in Babeland on the Lower East Side and author of the definitive Sex Toys 101, will tomorrow open the doors to Babeland on Bergen Street. The old people are already complaining, but the lesbians will be thrilled!