Leonardo DiCaprio has a case of shrinkage – real-estate shrinkage, at any rate. Since it was first reported in 2005 that the actor was buying in the now nearly completed Hudson Blue condo building in the West Village, the price and the size of his penthouse apartment has decreased substantially.
It isn’t costing $10 million, or even $5 million, as previously reported. It’s now under $3 million. And it’s not the three apartments that he was supposedly buying with Bill Clinton crony Ron Burkle. It’s a single one-bedroom, 11/2-bath condo of approximately 1,200 square feet. Included in the top-floor unit in the 10-story glass-encased building are a private 800-square-foot rooftop terrace with a hot tub, a fireplace in the living room, a gourmet kitchen with a skylight, high ceilings and lots of marble.
DiCaprio, who’s expected to move in this January, first heard of the building, developed by Horizen Global, because it’s a stone’s throw from the triplex penthouse that his former flame Gisele Bundchen owns and is now selling.
Other notables who’ve been spotted perusing Hudson Blue include Heidi Klum, Russell Simmons, Brett Ratner and Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman.
Bringing out the dad
Last week, we wrote about Martin Scorsese purchasing a $12.5 million townhouse on the Upper East Side. This week, we’ve caught wind of him buying an apartment in Williamsburg. He’s helping his eldest daughter, Catherine, purchase a condo with a $799,000 asking price in the hip Brooklyn ‘hood.
Catherine, who works in movie props and has appeared in some of her father’s films, is co-listed with her dad on the title of a one-bedroom, 11/2-bath loft-style duplex measuring almost 1,300 square feet. It features a 600-square-foot private garden and a dramatic living room with a 17-foot ceiling.
Originally a Civil War-era munitions foundry, the building includes many original details, such as smokestacks, exposed brick and timber and cast-iron staircases.
Representing the Scorseses was the Corcoran Group’s Emma Hamilton, who had no comment.
Model inks
Supermodel and sometime actress Emma Heming is strutting her 5-foot, 10-inch frame in a new Chelsea apartment. Sources say the leggy stunner, who moved back to the Big Apple after parting with her longtime boyfriend, L.A. nightclub kingpin Brent Bolthouse, has paid $1.85 million for a two-bedroom condo on 17th Street.
Heming, who’s lately been keeping company with John Stamos – and has walked the runway for Victoria’s Secret – has taken a 1,500-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in a doorman building.
“She’s thrilled with the neighborhood and glad to be back in Manhattan,” says our source.
Her broker was Debra Stewart of Prudential Douglas Elliman.
Bond girl
Speaking of brokers, one of our favorites is the lovely Melanie Lazenby. If the last name sounds familiar it’s because her father, George Lazenby, played James Bond in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”
The Prudential Douglas Elliman broker’s latest listing, with colleague Dina Lewis, is a Bond-like $11.5 million duplex penthouse condo on West Houston Street that’s wired with Crestron home-automation technology (which allows gadget freaks to control everything from lighting to temperature to home entertainment) that Q would approve of.
The loft-like three-bedroom, three-bath apartment, owned by a British banking couple, includes an auto-irrigating private terrace, soaring ceilings and great views of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings.