Mandarin Oriental International Ltd.

• Travel + Leisure picks the best 500 hotels in the world, and New York snags nine honors: the Four Seasons, Hotel Plaza Athenee, Lowell, Mandarin Oriental, Peninsula, Ritz-Carlton (Battery and Central Park), St. Regis, and Trump International. We vote for the Chelsea, too. [T+L]
• What do architects think about when asked to imagine NYC's future? They get bowled over with "anxiety over global warming." So the Architecture Research Office has created "radical coping mechanisms" to make up for soon-to-be flooded streets. See the cheery 22nd-century Manhattan above. [Architectural Record]
• In other news, CNN has a big article called Your Home: Is 'going green' worth the cost?. The sub-head reads: "The eco-friendly house (and renovation) has gone mainstream. But is it really worth the cost?" Yes. [CNN/Money]
• If you tell The Times that your $3.65 million carriage house was a "bargain," you'll probably get publically humiliated on the Internet. Especially if your renovation cost $500 per foot. And especially if you sorta stole the idea for your mega-hit book. [Gawker]
- Max Abelson
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That whole thing about the Mandarin Oriental sale, fact or fiction? Yeah, never mind.

The deal is in contract and is expected to close in February. A 73 percent share of the Time Warner Center hotel has been sold to Istithmar. According to the release from Mandarin Oriental International Limited, the luxury hotel is worth $340 million.

That puts the average room price at $1.37 million, which exceeds the $1.05 million per room that the W Hotel Union Square sold for in October (but less than the $1.4 million to $2 million range that was floating about last week). The Dubai-based Istithmar bought the W, too.

Mandarin Oriental will retain 25 percent of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, down from 50 percent. And Apollo Real Estate and the Related Companies, which together once owned 50 percent as well, will now hold a (very) minority share. Mandarin will continue to manage the hotel under a long-term contract.

- John Koblin

Did you hear? The Mandarian Oriental in the Time Warner Center is being sold to Istithmar. Or so they say.

The Mandarian Oriental rumor has been the juiciest real estate one floating around New York for the last several weeks, but trying to parse reality from fiction has been tricky.

The execs at Istithmar are keeping typically quiet. "We do not comment on market rumors," wrote David Jackson, the CEO at Istithmar, in an email to The Real Estate.

That's the same response a Mandarin Oriental spokeswoman gave The Observer a month ago.

"Several industry sources" told The Real Deal it was a done deal; "sources" told the Post the same.

One Real Deal source has each room being sold at $1.4 million; another has it at $2 million. A Post source has it at "approxiamtely $1.6 million."

To say the least, the details are murky.

If you listened to the rumors, the Mandarin Oriental's been in contract since late October. But with a masterful stroke in keeping this deal very quiet, we have a feeling no one will know if it's truly done -- and for how much -- until it closes.

- John Koblin

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Did we miss any New York City real estate news this morning? Please send along tips and links.

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Columnists ahoy! The Times' Joyce Purnick and the Post's Andrea Peyser confabbed briefly in a house phone alcove on the 36th floor of the Mandarin Oriental, the north tower of the Mordor that is the Time Warner Center. More and more press arrived--Maggie Haberman, Ben Smith, that tall annoyed blonde from local 4--not for the lure of a charity benefit for K.I.D.S., but for Barack Obama.

Around 8 p.m. last night, the Senator delivered half an hour of a not entirely committed speech, one which was marked by his usual mistake of being unwilling to arrange his text with places for an audience to applaud.

This time, he forewent his Martin Luther King, Jr., references for a story about Bobby Kennedy in Mississippi. The Senator, for all his talk about the death of baby boomer politics, only refers to the highlights of the 60's as a moral.

At the end he trailed off, and the press horded into a back room to briefly grill him.

"I was supposed to be here all day and have a bunch of meetings," Senator Obama said after--but they'd been cancelled, or at least postponed. "I circled and circled around Manhattan for a while," he said. How much longer will the Senator's vow to only fly commercial last?

According to his spokesfella, Tommy Vietor, he was departing immediately afterwards. This would turn out to be not exactly true.

Peyser, in the front row, got off the first question in the hastily assembled presser in the hotel's Lotus room. Imagine the most sarcastic tone of voice possible: "Have you met with Hillary Clinton while you're in town?" He had not. Shortly thereafter, the lights, overloaded by camera drain, went out. "It's Hillary," Peyser told the Senator. "She's got her finger on the switch."

-- Choire Sicha

After Hillary Clinton spoke last night at a New School benefit at the Mandarin Oriental honoring the developer John Tishman, I asked her what she thought was going to change now that the Democrats are in the majority.

Here's what she said:

"Everyone is hopeful and enthusiastic, we have an agenda which we laid out in the campaign. A lot of what we are going to be able to do will depend upon whether, you know, Republicans are willing to work wherever they possibly can together with us, and whether the White House is."

--Jason Horowitz

Wednesday 24th The Time Warner behemoth on Columbus Circle burps out another event tonight , as Dom  read more »