Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

How desperate is Raymond Weil president Benny Shabtai to unload his townhouse at 870 Park Avenue? Desperate enough to cut more than $13 million off its price, apparently. The 13-room, 11,875-square-foot Robert A.M. Stern-designed mansion, which has been on-and-off the market since 2004, was listed with Paula Del Nunzio for $33 million in March 2008. Since then, Shabtai has switched brokers (he's hired Carrie Chiang) and cut the price twice, dropping it down to $26.75 million last September and then down to $19.95 million earlier this week. A floorplan and photos of the renovated spread—which features a double-height living room, spiral staircase, a paneled library, six bedrooms, and a four-passenger elevator—after the jump.More

For denizens of Los Angeles, living in houses as opposed to apartments has always been one of the few advantages of a city where you spend half your life behind the wheel of a car and the other half listening to people talk about weekend box office receipts or the latest and greatest new age routine. But real estate developers are now building more condos, according to today's Times, albeit condos that offer a "New York-style luxury high-rise lifestyle," which means "restaurants open 24/7, outdoor entertaining spaces and patrols by Israeli-trained security guards to foil the paparazzi." Sounds just like New York! Leading this trend? Famous bad mother Candy Spelling who, two years after Aaron's death, is selling her 56,500 square foot chateau-style house, with its famed gift-wrapping room, in favor of an apartment in a new Robert A. M. Stern designed building. But as you can imagine, the move won't be without its sacrifices.More