Hedge Fund Billionaire's New Upper East Side Palace Will Be Just as Crazy as the Original
Hedge funder Phil Falcone and his wife Lisa Maria have a grand vision for the $49 million townhouse they bought from Bob Guccione. A peek at their plans show the redesigned home will be as eccentrically awesome as the original.
The Falcones bought the East 67th Street property—one of the the largest single residences in Manhattan—from Penthouse founder Bob Guccione in 2008, and it has been undergoing extensive renovations ever since. We accused the couple of ruining it by removing all the crazy breast sculptures, Roman columns, and dirty details from Guccione's masterwork, and suggested they'd turn it into some vanilla McMansion with granite countertops. Boy, were we wrong!
The New York Post took a look at city records and asked around and here is what they found out about the $10 million renovation.
- The Falcones are going to replace Guccione's orgy pool in the basement with a new 34-foot pool of their own. There will be a bar next to it, so maybe there will be orgies after a dozen margaritas.
- There will be a gym, spa, sauna, and plunge pool. Will one of the guest rooms be used to house a Russian to swat their backs with branches?
- No more going out for dry cleaning! There will be a "press room" in the basement.
- Lisa Maria will have an even more obscene closet than Carrie Bradshaw. She'll actually have two separate changing rooms, one complete with a bar in the event "a cocktail be necessary while choosing shoes."
- Not only will there be a movie theater with stadium seating on the premises, there will also be a security room with feeds from cameras throughout the house. The Falcones really like to watch, apparently.
- There's another bar on the first floor, not connected to a pool or closet.
- Not only are there two elevators—there's a separate one for "the help," which is probably a good thing—but the couple is also considering heating the sidewalks outside the house so they don't have to shovel ice or snow. Won't the help do that anyway?
- When it's finished, the residence will encompass 25,726-square-feet. That's the kind of space you need when you live with your piano-playing Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, which the Falcones do. (His name is Wilbur.)
Sadly, the Falcones decided to get rid of the marble toilets and "marble column with a likeness of the porn king carved at the top." That's unfortunate. But they're making sure that Guccione's tradition of excess lives on in their own way, and that's nice to see. Now how do we get an invite to the housewarming party when the renovations are finally complete? Please?