OWNER: Nick Denton
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $15,000 per month
SIZE: 2,556 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Amid a deluge of publicity surrounding the immense and potentially devastating $140.1 million legal judgment against Gawker.com, the groundbreaking and famously viciously snarky media news and gossip website he co-founded in 2002, British-born digital media pioneer Nick Denton has made his deluxe condo in New York City’s Soho ‘hood available as a luxury rental at $15,000 per month.
A federal judge in Florida recently upheld the super-sized verdict against Gawker Media in favor of Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea who sued the digital media juggernaut after it posted a video clip of the handlebar mustachioed wrestler and a woman who was, at the time, married to Mister Bollea’s radio personality pal Bubba the Love Sponge Clem and who claimed in court to have had intimate relations with Mister Bollea four times at the behest of her now ex-husband. Classy stuff, right? Mister Denton, on the hook personally for $10 million of the $140 million judgment, is reported to be examining options as to the sale of some or all Gawker Media according to Fortune magazine but faces stiff uphill challenges such as plummeting traffic on its flagship site, Gawker.com, which has shifted in recent months away from its mainstay fare of media news and celebrity skewering to more political coverage. Also potentially problematic for any interested buyer is deep-pocketed PayPal founder and tech investor Peter Thiel who admitted in an interview with The New York Times that he bankrolled the Bollea lawsuit in an ongoing effort to hobble and ultimately shut down the Gawker empire as payback for publicly outing him and others in a 2007 article published on the now shuttered Valleywag blog that focused on Silicon Valley. All fascinating fodder but let’s get back to the real estate matter at hand, shall we?
Mister Denton acquired his Soho condo in March 2004 for $1.87 million, per property records, and current marketing materials show the “stylized” two-bedroom and two-bathroom loft-like apartment measures 2,556 square feet and marries original architectural features such as exposed wood ceiling beams and cast iron columns with sleek finishes and modern-day creatures comforts. The nearly 30-foot-long combination living/dining room has ceilings that soar to almost 13 feet and seven extra-deep window insets cleverly lined with bookshelves. The open kitchen has stainless steel counter tops, a mix of stainless steel and ebony wood cabinetry, and a full array of name brand stainless steel appliances. Black painted wood floors in the main living spaces switch to mottled concrete in the master suite that includes an east-facing bedroom flooded with morning light, a dressing corridor lined with a pair of fitted walk-in closets plus additional storage and closets, a roomy but windowless bathroom with teak soaking tub, and a wee reading nook tucked into an otherwise useless corner with a huge window.
Denton’s small, boutique building has long attracted its fair share of Hollywood types. In 2010 Samuel L. Jackson shelled out $3.995 million for a not quite 2,600-square-foot unit and Harvey Weinstein briefly owned a full-floor apartment he bought in early 2005 for $6.83 million and sold in late 2007 for $8 million to a former retail fashion executive. In August 2014 Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos sold the building’s 9,865-square foot duplex penthouse — rumored to have once been owned by German pro tennis icon Boris Becker who allegedly leased it to Nicole Kidman for around forty grand a month — for $20 million to a real estate mogul.
As far as we can tell from a careful but far from forensic parse of property records neither Mister Denton nor his actor husband Derrence Washington — married in spring the 2014 in a soignée ceremony at the Museum of Natural History — own any other property in New York City.
Exterior image: Nicholas Strini for Property Shark
Interior listing photos and floor plan: Stribling
