The Agency Takes Over Sales at Former Macklowe Condo Project

A slow-selling Upper East Side condo project has already swapped out sponsors and changed up the art on the walls.

Now, it’s switching up its sales team.

The Agency’s Michael Biryla and John Antretter are taking over sales of the final 24 units at Centurion Real Estate Partners’ 200 East 59th Street, now dubbed the Elysia. The sales team, which is replacing a team from Douglas Elliman that had been on the building for nearly a decade, will be working alongside rennie, a real estate consulting firm that The Agency partnered with earlier this year.

A spokesperson said in a statement that the firm was “proud to have represented” the property and wishes “Centurion Real Estate Partners and Keppel much continued success.”

The new team is bringing significant price cuts to the remaining listings. An amendment to the building’s offering plan filed in April shows prices on the 24 units were cut by an average of roughly 20 percent from 2025.

The CetraRuddy-designed building rises 35 stories and has 67 units.

The team already appears to have shifted the sales strategy for the building’s crown penthouse. The top floor had been marketed, perhaps misleadingly, as a duplex for as much as $23 million in 2023, with the unit’s private roof deck serving as the second floor. It was also listed in combination with the floor below for a conceptual triplex for as much as $28 million.

Now, the penthouse is hitting the market as a full-floor three-bedroom spanning over 3,800 square feet, with a private roofdeck and wraparound terrace adding another 3,400 square feet of outdoor space. The unit is asking $14.5 million, or roughly $3,800 per square foot.

Take three

The new sales team and pricing come as the latest attempt for the building to close out sales over a decade since the project was first conceived.

The project’s last opportunity for revitalization came right at the start of the pandemic, when John Tashjian’s Centurion Real Estate Partners stepped in as the project’s sponsor after Macklowe Properties sold its stake the previous year.

Macklowe had bought the development site in 2014 for $87 million, and financed it with a $64 million acquisition loan provided by Singapore’s United Overseas Bank. After pre-development was completed, the partners obtained a $116 million construction loan from UOB in 2016.

The notoriously art-forward developer tried to gin up interest in the building with a coterie of massive glass giraffes, elephants and rhinos placed around the building’s outdoor spaces, which Macklowe told the Journal at the time was “a way to tell the world that the building is special and to give a personality.”

But by 2019, Macklowe sold his stake in the development to his capital partner, Singapore-based Alpha Investment Partners, who brought in Centurion.

The new sponsor did away with the animals and brought in price cuts, but the building’s refresh came in March 2020, landing in time for one of the worst years for city real estate in recent memory. In June 2020, the project secured a $204 million inventory loan on its 61 unsold units.

The building took advantage of the subsequent condo boom in 2022, selling 14 units and then another eight the following year, but sales have since slowed, according to data from Marketproof.

It’s now taken up residence as one of the city’s lingering projects. But times have changed since 2017, and the condo glut that defined much of the last decade is over and inventory is at its lowest point since 2014, which heralded a wild few years of record-breaking sales in new developments.

Biryla thinks that makes it the perfect time to re-re-launch the project.

“This building honestly has just kind of gotten forgotten about,” Biryla said. “People are starving for inventory, and good inventory at that.”

The building’s residences all have their own private outdoor space, and the higher floors have relatively unobstructed views of the city.

Part of the project’s past struggles likely came from a no-man’s location on 59th Street and Third Avenue. StreetEasy has labeled the area “Sutton Place”, but Biryla pointed out that the condos on the north side of the street snagged an “Upper East Side” designation.

The recent price cuts, which put the average asking price of the remaining units at around $2,800 per square foot, will likely help compete against other projects a few blocks further west. The Malabar Residences at 126 East 57th Street, for example, has an average asking price of over $3,300 per square foot, according to Marketproof.

“The building’s price per square foot is comparable, if not better, than some of the other new developments,” Biryla said. “But the difference, in my opinion, is you have higher floors, open views and very low carry.”

The project appears to have some early momentum, with three units already in contract, according to Antretter.