Steve Gold has met with countless buyers and sellers in his decade-plus career in real estate, some appearing alongside him on Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing New York.” But his meeting with a SoHo loft owner two years ago was probably the most memorable for the agent/reality TV star.
The owner, Sean Kelly, who runs an art gallery near Hudson Yards, was having trouble selling his longtime apartment at 22 Wooster Street, a low-rise brick and cast-iron co-op building. “The loft needed a lot of work,” said Mr. Gold, 36, an agent with the Corcoran Group. “He had it on the market for $6.5 million to start, then down to $5.5 million. He came to me to sell it.”
Mr. Gold didn’t get the listing. Instead, he got a new home for himself and his partner, Luiza Gawlowska, who was pregnant with their daughter, Rose, at the time. “I went in for a listing presentation and came out with an apartment,” he said.
Mr. Gold said he paid around $4.5 million for the fifth-floor penthouse in an off-market deal in June 2019. He then spent another $2.5 million on a gut renovation, down to “the original brick and beams,” that began almost immediately and was only recently completed.
“I always dreamed of a penthouse in SoHo that I can make my own,” he said. And he saw plenty of potential in this roughly 3,400-square-foot unit, with three exposures and a wall of windows overlooking the cobblestone street. “I changed everything, from the floor plan to the finishes.”
Now someone else may get to enjoy it all. Mr. Gold is putting the painstakingly refurbished residence back on the market, with a price tag of $9.995 million. The monthly maintenance is $5,028.
Though he will miss the downtown home, he decided that a “less busy environment” might be better for his young daughter. “I always thought this was going to be my forever home,” said Mr. Gold, who will serve as the property’s listing agent. “But I feel compelled to be closer to my family. I grew up in Stamford, Conn., and I’d like to raise my child outside the city.”
The Wooster Street building, erected in the 1920s between Canal and Grand Streets, stands five stories high and houses 13 units. It was converted to a co-op in the early 1970s.
Mr. Gold’s apartment is configured with three bedrooms, each with an en suite bathroom and a powder room. There are five skylights, plus high-end finishes and fixtures that he chose, with help from the interior designer Samuel Amoia, a frequent collaborator. “Every stone I hand selected myself, and I picked the slab I wanted,” he said. “There’s so much thought that went into every single aspect. This was a true labor of love.”
The unit retains some original prewar details, like the exposed pipes, beams and columns, and the window archways, though the floors were replaced with wide oak planks imported from Dinesen of Denmark after three layers of subflooring were removed.
Entry to the residence, from a key-locked elevator, is through a foyer that leads to a great room with areas for dining and lounging, as well as an open kitchen outfitted with custom millwork and a large island and countertops of Italian Calacatta Paonazzo marble. Off the great room is a windowed home office with a built-in desk and wood shelving from Dinesen. There’s a secondary kitchen with a large pantry (used for entertaining) and a laundry room near the middle of the loft, reachable from the main living space as well as a back hall corridor.
A hallway leads to the paneled powder room with Calacatta Viola marble and the bedrooms. The primary suite has two extra-large walk-in closets and a spacious bathroom with gray marble, brushed bronze finishes and a claw-foot soaking tub.
There are lots of closets, along with an abundance of windows and an eclectic mix of contemporary and vintage furnishings and art, including works by Keith Haring and Mel Bochner.
“Doing what I’ve done for as long as I’ve done, I’ve seen a lot of apartments and I know what I like,” Mr. Gold said. And this apartment has “far exceeded my expectations.”
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