Waldorf Astoria’s 375 new condos to hit the market this fall

It’s official: The Waldorf Astoria’s long-planned condo conversion will finally hit the market this fall.

Developer Anbang announced today that it’ll bring the iconic Art Deco building’s 375 new condos to the market later this year with Douglas Elliman Development Marketing, with Knight Frank working on international sales.

The project has also gotten a new name—the Towers of the Waldorf Astoria—as well as a teaser website, which doesn’t have much to it beyond a video focusing on the statue known as The Spirit of Achievement that sits above the hotel’s Park Avenue entrance. (Why that? According to text on the website, the statue “epitomizes the timeless glamour, ambition, and innovation of the Waldorf Astoria,” and “this legacy inspires a new collection of contemporary residences.”)

The hotel/condo conversion of the famed property has been in the works for several years; Anbang bought the Waldorf in 2014 for a whopping $2 billion, and the hotel closed in 2017 to facilitate construction. As of last year, initial pre-demolition work on the property had finished, with the real work—of transforming hotel rooms into luxurious condos, some with enormous floorplans—now underway.

But as the Wall Street Journal notes, those apartments will be hitting the market at a particularly challenging time for luxury real estate. There’s a well-documented glut of high-priced apartments in New York City, with real estate appraiser Jonathan Miller estimating that close to 8,000 new condos remained unsold in 2018. While pricing has yet to be revealed for the Waldorf’s condos, it’s all but guaranteed that they’ll fall squarely within the “luxury” category.

The developers and Elliman execs seem confident that the cachet of the property will put it at the top of potential buyers’ minds. “Its uniqueness puts us in a class of our own and the wide array of unit sizes and types opens up the universe of buyers,” Susan de França, Elliman’s president and CEO, told the WSJ.

In addition to the 375 condos, the Waldorf will have 350 renovated hotel rooms when it reopens to the public in 2021. The revamp is being carried out by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and Anbang is working to carefully restore some of the hotel’s interiors—including the West Lounge, formerly known as Peacock Alley, which is located on the first floor; the Grand Ballroom and balconies on the third floor; and the Park Avenue lobby, with its 13 murals and a floor mosaic designed by French artist Louis Rigal—that were designated landmarks in 2017.