Before former Disney head Michael Eisner shaded his successor Bob Iger on X over ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel debacle this week, he was embroiled in a much more private battle between board members at the storied Pierre.
A Sept. 17 board meeting at the famous co-op and hotel overlooking Central Park at East 61st Street — where residents have included Liz Taylor, Yves Saint Laurent and Aristotle Onassis — was so star-studded, sources tell us, that many residents of the storied building were left slack-jawed at all the VIPs they didn’t know were their neighbors.
“It was a super important meeting. It was a mash-up” of the rich and famous, said an insider, noting that the A-listers don’t usually appear at the building’s meetings.
“I had no idea Art Garfunkel lived here,” one gobsmacked tenant, who’s lived at the famed address for decades, told Page Six.
The “Mrs. Robinson” singer, now 83, even had a historic pop music détente just last year over lunch at the hotel with his famed, estranged collaborator Paul Simon, 83, when Simon’s ex-wife, Peggy Harper, moved in.
Garfunkel ran into Simon’s grown son, Harper Simon, in the hallways, he’s said, and they brokered a sit-down for the elderly frenemies to patch things up.
“Harper set up a lunch at the Pierre’s restaurant. After years of estrangement, Paul and I got on great,” Garfunkel told Rolling Stone.
But the Sept. 17 board meeting featured anything but “The Sound of Silence.”
“The meeting was contentious,” said a person familiar with the scene.
Residents include billionaire fashion mogul Tory Burch, former building board member Eisner, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Shari Redstone, fresh off the Paramount Skydance deal.
Lutnick owns the largest unit at the Pierre — a 12,000-square-foot triplex penthouse he bought in 2017 for
$44 million — but he’s never actually moved in.
In a recent New York Times article, Lutnick was cast as leading a charge to sell the once-grand property in a $2 billion deal that could be a windfall for his former real estate firm.
The Times sub-headline on the property read, “Some residents of the Pierre claim that Howard Lutnick, who owns the penthouse, was part of a plot to sell off this symbol of Manhattan glamour and wealth.”
Other sources told Page Six Lutnick is unfairly being made out to be “some sort of boogeyman” because he’s a member of the Trump administration. “The building can’t be stolen in the night by Howard Lutnick,” huffed an insider familiar with the board.
Some in the building believe that the current manager, Taj Hotels, won’t invest enough to properly fix the property that’s so banged up, tenants have been trapped in one elevator while another is out of order.
But others want to give Taj a chance. Monthly maintenance payments per tenant cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Lutnick’s former real estate firm, Newmark Group, came on to advise the building, and a proposal has now been made by the Saudi Khashoggi family to buy it. The pact would see the property renovated and possibly managed by the Sultan of Brunei’s Dorchester Collection, the luxe hospitality chain behind the Beverly Hills Hotel in LA, Le Meurice in Paris and the Dorchester in London.
But that deal — à la the Waldorf-Astoria — would force all the tenants to move out, though a source tells Page Six some could stand to make four to five times their initial investments on their properties, depending on how many shares they own in the co-op.
Reports have said Newmark could make tens of millions from a Pierre sale at $2 billion.
The Times report said that at the ultra-fancy but down-at-the-heels hotel, “stately carpets were fraying, the elevators were breaking down, and the front desk often stood empty. In the minds of its well-heeled residents, the Pierre was falling apart.”
One resident couldn’t even get change of a $100 bill at the front desk!
But the plan to sell the hotel has caused a bitter rift in the building. Seen as leading the resistance is Burch — known for her aspirational preppy fashion brand — who combined two apartments at the hotel in 2001.
She raised her now-grown kids at the address, and apparently got animated at the board meeting.
A source told Page Six of the scene: “Tory lost her usual cool and reserved demeanor at a meeting of the Pierre hotel’s shareholders on Wednesday.”
The insider added: “Tory, polite at first, raised her voice and was clearly angry about the ‘fast’-moving deal that would displace her from the apartment where she has lived for about two decades.”
Others confirmed Burch’s ire to us where “Tory got progressively madder . . . There were dozens of shareholders in the private meeting room, with others joining in by Zoom.”
Multiple sources said Burch told the board she had learned more from the Times article about the proposal to buy the building than what was offered to the residents officially.
“The strongest voice came from Tory who complained that the residents were ill-informed,” said a source.
Another tenant, Tina Beriro, reportedly wrote the board in an email of the plan to sell the building, “I am an 84-year-old widow with no family and have just redone my apartment at great expense . . . To find new accommodations and go through the trauma, exhaustion and money involved in a move would seriously affect my health, well-being, and finances.”
Adding to the intrigue, a source tells us that reports of the hotel’s dilapidated state are overblown.
One insider says an assessment showing the hotel is in dire straits was refuted by a subsequent study revealing it needs a glow-up, not the overhaul that the sale would provide.
Yet another insider said there have actually been up to three assessments as part of routine due diligence that various parties must do to make bids and pitch their plans for the property. The source said there are other plans being presented to the board besides the Khashoggi option.
Two board members recently left, we hear, and have been replaced by a duo who are wary of the sale, sources said. Sources also told Page Six that 50% of the tenants are now opposed to the Lutnick plan.
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Said another source: “There is now a 90-day due-diligence period, then there will be a vote — if two-thirds vote yes, Tory and other VIPs will be evicted from their apartments, albeit with millions in profits in their pockets.”
Reps did not comment.