It has been a really, really bad slump for Bill Ackman, who just admitted that his terrible bet on Valeant Pharmaceuticals was a losing bet, but make no mistake about it: The Pershing Square founder is still very much living in a literal penthouse, if not metaphorically so anymore.
The Wall Street Journal published an article on Sunday about how the hottest trend for landlords of Manhattan office spaces is adding penthouses in an effort to compete with fancy new office buildings that are popping up in neighborhoods like Lower Manhattan. Brian Waterman, vice chairman at real-estate-services firm Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, tells the Journal the “office penthouse additions are part of a broader push by owners to carve out more dynamic amenity spaces to appeal to tenants looking to embellish their brands and recruit top employees.”
One of the recipients of a sweet penthouse addition is none other than Ackman’s Pershing Square offices, according to the Journal.
Creating penthouse space is logistically challenging. At 787 11th Avenue, Georgetown Co. and its partners are adding a two-story, 90,000 square-foot glass box with terrace space, a tennis court for its top-floor tenant, Pershing Square Capital Management LP, and a separate 13,000 square-foot rooftop deck for the now eight-story building.
The owners are able to do this by using floor space removed to create a double-height space between floors six and seven, said Adam Flatto, Georgetown’s chief executive.
A rooftop tennis court!
Ackman is known to be a big tennis aficionado who once paid $100,000 to play a charity doubles match with John and Patrick McEnroe, as Vanity Fair noted in a damning feature about Ackman’s investment struggles.
Early in the match, McEnroe hit a lob to Ackman, who slammed it back, directly at McEnroe’s body. The gentlemanly thing to do would have been to warn McEnroe that the ball was coming at him, and then to subsequently apologize. But Ackman instead smashed the shot and turned around and walked to the baseline, without saying a word.
McEnroe seemed pissed. Here he was humoring some hedge-fund guy for charity, and the dude was taking it so seriously and being rude about it to boot.
We’re going to assume McEnroe won’t be heading to Pershing’s tennis court for a rematch with Ackman anytime soon.
Screenshot via Bloomberg