當代世界貧富差距懸殊的真實寫照 紐約公園大道432號

“There are only two markets, ultraluxury and subsidized housing.” —Rafael Vinoly, architect of 432 Park Avenue

“現在只有兩個市場：超級豪宅市場和補貼房市場。”——公園大道432號建築設計師拉斐爾o維諾利

Along a stretch of New York City’s Park Avenue, between 56th and 57th Street, soars a tower so jaw-droppingly altitudinous that King Kong himself would likely think twice before scaling it.

在紐約市公園大道上，第56號與第57號街道間，有一棟摩天大樓高聳入雲，此樓之高，估計就連金剛也會望而卻步。

Its rooftop, roughly a quarter of a mile high, makes it the tallest building in New York and the highest residential tower in the western hemisphere.

該樓屋頂層高約0.25英里（約402米），使得此樓成爲紐約最高建築，也是整個西半球最高的住宅樓。

At 96 stories (1,396 feet), it has no company in the space it occupies atop Manhattan’s skyline. The Empire State Building tops out some 150 feet below that. Absent its spire, the newly built World Financial Center—itself a giant—is 28 feet shorter than this new cathedral to uber-wealth. 432 Park Avenue can be seen from all five boroughs of New York City, from inbound Metro-North trains coming in along the Harlem River, from the Meadowlands in New Jersey, and from several vantage points on Long Island. Its lone silhouette dominates the skyline from every angle. It demands your attention in a way that no residential building ever has.

這座96層的大廈總高約1396英尺（約425米），在整個曼哈頓已是俯視羣樓，比帝國大廈（Empire State Building）還要高出約150英尺。哪怕不算其尖頂，此棟超級豪宅也要高出新建的世界金融中心（World Financial Center）28英尺。從紐約市所有的5個區，你都能看到公園大道432號，不僅如此，你還能從沿着哈萊姆河駛入紐約的大都會北方鐵路（Metro-North）列車上看到它，從新澤西州的Meadowlands看到它，從長島（Long Island）的幾個高點都能看到它。不論從哪個角度看，高聳入雲的公園大道432號都帶着幾分遺世獨立的味道。從來沒有哪棟住宅樓像公園大道432號這樣引人矚目。

The most remarkable thing about 432 Park, however, is not just its sheer size. It is the fact that, in a building so tall and imposing, with over 400,000 square feet of usable interior space, there are only 104 units for people to live in. 432 Park Avenue is, in short, a monument to the epic rise of the global super-wealthy. It is the house that historic inequality built.

不過，公園大道432號最引人注目的，並非其大塊頭，而是在這棟內部使用面積高達40萬平方英尺（約3.7萬平方米）的高樓裏，居然只有104套住宅。簡言之，公園大道432號是全球超富階層崛起的歷史見證物。它是史無前例的收入不平等現象堆出來的摩天大廈。

Our story begins in 2009 with a little-known Los Angeles-based private equity firm called CIM. The firm’s three managing partners, a former Drexel Burnham banker and a pair of former Israeli paratroopers, quietly dropped in on Manhattan’s punch drunk post-financial crisis real estate market with money to spend. CIM moved quickly, writing checks to bail out some of the city’s most prestigious real estate families and firms, as projects were stalling and financing had all but dried up. The outsiders became Manhattan power players overnight.

我們的故事始於2009年，當時有一家名爲CIM的私募股權公司，該公司總部位於洛杉磯，此時尚名不見經傳。金融危機後，公司三位管理合夥人，一位是前德崇（Drexel Burnham）銀行家，還有兩位是前以色列傘兵，他們帶着錢悄悄來到遭受重創的曼哈頓房地產市場。CIM迅速開出支票，救助紐約市最負盛名的房地產家族和企業，當時，許多項目已經暫停，資金幾乎枯竭。這三位外鄉客一夜之間成爲曼哈頓的重量級人物。

Strong relationships with investment organizations like Blackstone and Calpers put the west coast-based firm in a position to capitalize on a once-in-a-generation opportunity in a city where the incumbents were largely overleveraged from the prior boom. They acted as the bank behind the resurrection of several high-profile distressed properties, and allowed the original developers to stay involved with each deal as their partners.

與黑石（Blackstone）和加州公務員退休基金（Calpers）等投資機構的過硬關係，使得這家位於美國西海岸的企業，能利用紐約市數十年難得一見的機遇，當時，紐約市的企業大都因之前的繁榮過度舉債。CIM公司爲多個備受矚目、出現問題的房產項目提供資金，並允許原開發商作爲CIM的合作伙伴繼續參與項目。

By 2011, CIM was everywhere. The economy was slowly improving, the financial firmament was beginning to thaw, and institutional investors were cutting checks again. It is in this recovering environment that a project as ambitious as 432 Park Avenue can even be dreamed of, let alone funded.

到2011年，CIM已經無處不在。當時，經濟正緩慢改善，金融界開始回暖，機構投資者又開始投資。正是在這種復甦的大環境下，公園大道432號這樣雄心勃勃的項目才得以誕生，並獲得資金。

Harry Macklowe is one of the real estate industry’s most famous and colorful characters, with a massive portfolio of properties and projects to go along with his outsize personality. No stranger to gambles and calculated risks, Macklowe found himself in a bit of a squeeze in 2008, as the seams of the property market began to tear and the bills from New York’s decade of excess came due. A highly leveraged real estate transaction backed by a $5.8 billion loan from Deutsche Bank kept his name in the news, and his stake in several trophy properties, like the General Motors Building, were said to have been in jeopardy.

哈里o麥克洛是房地產行業最著名、最有趣的人物之一。他個性十足，手頭有衆多房產和項目。麥克洛喜歡賭博和冒險。2008年，隨着房地產市場開始崩潰，紐約十年過度揮霍的後果開始顯現，麥克洛發現自己處境有些不妙。一樁槓桿率極高、獲得德意志銀行（Deutsche Bank）58億美元貸款的房地產交易，使得麥克洛成爲新聞人物，而麥克洛在幾處重要房產【比如通用汽車大廈（General Motors Building）】中的股份，據稱已經岌岌可危。

CIM stepped into the breach, providing financing for several of Macklowe’s troubled projects, and a partnership was born that would lead to the groundbreaking at 432 Park. By August 2011, their incredible plans for the tower—which would occupy the land where the Macklowe-owned Drake Hotel had been demolished—began to leak onto real estate news sites like Curbed and The New York Observer. The idea of a “fifth-act” survivor like Harry Macklowe partnering with a “mysterious” developer from out of town proved to be an irresistible storyline to the chattering classes.

就在此時，CIM挺身而出，爲麥克洛多個陷入困境的項目提供融資，雙方就此建立合作關係，這纔有了後來開創性的公園大道432號。到2011年8月，公園大道432號大廈的驚人計劃——此項目將在拆毀的麥克洛名下德雷克酒店（Drake Hotel）原址上建造——開始在Curbed和《紐約觀察家》（The New York Observer）等房地產新聞網站上出現。哈里o麥克洛這樣的絕處逢生者，與“神祕”外來開發商合作的戲碼，對愛侃侃而談的人士而言，是極爲誘人的故事情節。

Within a year, we began to get a sense of what 432 Park Avenue would come to represent. First, we learned that the number of condo units built would be closer to 100 than the originally planned 140. Next came details about the building’s sales efforts. Notably, while Macklowe Properties had kept 432 Park Avenue’s units off of popular broker databases like StreetEasy and the Residential Listing Service (RLS), the firm was going full-throttle in its attempt to court the Russian oligarchy. A kind of traveling sales office was set up at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Moscow’s Tverskaya Street, where dozens of billionaires pass through the lobby each day.

不到一年，我們就開始大概知道公園大道432號會是什麼樣。首先，我們瞭解到，建造的公寓數量將接近100套，而非原計劃的140套。隨後我們獲悉了該建築的

By May 2013, Macklowe had announced that the top-floor penthouse was already sold for an astonishing $95 million. Half of the building’s apartments were under contract, with projections of $3 billion in total sales. This February, Manhattan realtor Douglas Elliman was brought on as the exclusive co-sales agent to help move the rest of the units.

銷售工作細節。值得注意的是，麥克洛地產公司（Macklowe Properties）沒有將

It is widely believed that the building will only be one-quarter occupied at all times, even though it will be completely sold out. Keep in mind that these are pied-a-terres that begin at $7 million each and include several full-floor parcels in the $75 million range. More than anything else, this speaks to the insatiable appetite of the world’s greatly expanded billionaire class. Middle Eastern oil magnates, Chinese billionaires, Russian oligarchs, and the Latin American aristocracy all have one thing in common: More money than they know what to do with and a desperation to get as much of it out of their home countries as possible. New York real estate works very well as both a facilitator of this as well as a store of value.

公園大道432號的公寓放上StreetEasy和住宅掛牌服務系統（Residential Listing Service, RLS）等大受歡迎的經紀人數據庫，而是大力吸引俄羅斯寡頭。該公司在莫斯科特維爾大街的麗思卡爾頓酒店（Ritz-Carlton Hotel）設立了流動銷售辦事處，每天有數十名億萬富翁穿過該酒店大堂。

As of this writing, there are currently plans for eight more ultra-luxe towers in and around Manhattan, in various stages of development. The explosion of wealth among ultra high net worth (UNHW) individuals around the world has made all of this possible. According to a new study from UBS and Wealth-X, there are 211,275 people in the world who could be considered ultra high net worth, with assets totaling north of $30 million. The approximate amount of wealth controlled by this group is estimated at just under $30 trillion. And while the number of UHNW people grew by 6% since 2013, their assets grew by 7%.

到2013年5月，麥克洛宣佈，頂層閣樓已經售出，售價高達9500萬美元。半數公寓已經簽約，總銷售額預計高達30億美元。今年二月，曼哈頓房地產經紀商道格拉斯艾麗曼（Douglas Elliman）成爲獨家聯合銷售代理商，幫助銷售剩下的公寓。

But these figures obscure an even more important trend taking root among the UHNW rankings: People with over a billion dollars in assets (there are 2,325 of them) saw their wealth increase by 12% year over year, while those at the bottom of the group—the 91,000 people with assets between $30 million and $49 million—realized a comparatively smaller 7% bump in wealth. Those at the top of the top are seeing their fortunes grow twice as fast as those at the bottom of the top. And the number of UHNW individuals who fall in the $750 million to $1 billion category saw their ranks swell by 20% this year to over 1,200 people. The bottom line is that the richer you are, the faster you’re getting even richer.

人們普遍認爲，儘管所有公寓將全部售罄，但該大樓的入住率將始終保持在25%。請記住，這些臨時住所每套起價700萬美元，還有幾套公寓佔據了一整層，售價高達約7500萬美元。這是全球億萬富豪階層大大擴充的絕佳例證。中東石油巨頭、中國億萬富翁、俄羅斯寡頭，以及拉丁美洲貴族，都有一個共同點：錢多得不知道該怎麼花，而且都拼命將錢轉移到海外。紐約房產既可以幫助他們實現上述願望，又能作爲儲值手段。

This explains why a city like New York can build dozens of ultra-luxury residential towers and continue to sell out. In New York alone, it is estimated that there are 8,655 full-time residents who would be categorized as ultra-high net worth, the most of any city in the world. Wealth-X finds that the average UHNW individual owns 2.7 properties and that 8% of their wealth is invested in real estate. Logically speaking, as their wealth grows, so too does their capacity to own and invest in an increasing amount of high-end housing.

截至筆者撰稿時，曼哈頓及其周邊地區計劃新增八棟超豪華大樓，相關項目進展情況不一。全世界超高淨值（UNHW）人羣的財富激增，使得這一切成爲可能。瑞銀（UBS）和Wealth-X進行的一項新研究顯示，全球有21.1275萬人是資產總額超過3000萬美元的超高淨值人士。該人羣控制的財富總額估計僅略低於30萬億美元。2013年以來，超高淨值人士的數量增加了6％，其資產增長了7％。

This coming spring, the few dozen occupants of 432 Park Avenue, North America’s third-tallest building, will begin to move in. They will furnish their palatial apartments against a global backdrop of deflationary fears, central banks in perpetual crisis mode, massive unemployment, and stubbornly stagnating wage growth for 99% of the world’s population.

不過，上述數字掩蓋了超高淨值人羣中一個更重要的趨勢：資產超過10億美元的人士（約2325人），財富年增長12％，而處於超高淨值人羣底層的9.1萬人，其資產爲3000萬至4900萬美元，財富增幅不到7％，相對較小。那些頂級富豪的財富增長速度，爲底層富豪的兩倍。今年，資產爲7.5億至10億美元的超高淨值人士，人數增加了20％，超過了1200人。總之，越是有錢人，財富增長越快。

In previous generations, when towers of this scale were erected, they were monuments to working. 432 Park, unlike the Chrysler Building, the World Financial Center, and the Empire State Building, is a monument to owning.

紐約這樣的城市，能建造數十棟超豪華住宅樓，而且棟棟售罄，原因即在此。僅在紐約，估計有8655名常住居民爲超高淨值人士，在全球城市中獨佔鰲頭。Wealth-X發現，超高淨值人士人均擁有2.7套房產，其8％的財富投資於房地產。按理說，隨着其財富的增長，他們將有能力持有並投資於更多的高檔住宅。

In the Medieval era, towers were erected to separate royalty and feudal overlords from the rest of the population during times of plague and suffering. It was an effective barrier, both physical and symbolic. A 1,400-foot skyscraper, in America’s most populous city, in which fewer than 100 people will reside, is perhaps the perfect present-day parallel to such behavior. The ascendance of 432 Park Avenue to its now-dominant place in the skyline says more about the state of our world than a thousand Thomas Pikettys typing on a thousand keyboards ever could.

北美第三高樓——公園大道432號的數十位住戶將於2015年春季開始入住。在可能出現通縮、各國央行處於長期危機模式、大量失業以及全球99％的人口工資增長停滯的大背景下，公園大道432號的住戶們將開始裝修其富麗堂皇的公寓。