Condos Tap Vintage Appeal

0

Brokers for Granite Park Place, a luxury condo development in Pasadena’s South Lake district, are pairing wine with real estate.

To sell some of its remaining units, Miami specialty brokerage firm Domineum Group converted the property’s sales center into a wine cellar with more than 600 bottles of specially commissioned private-label wine so potential buyers can sip while perusing floor plans.

Thirteen of 22 remaining units, considered among the project’s nicest, had been held back from the market, and Domineum President Paul Sunshine said the idea for the temperature-controlled wine room and property-branded wine came from a play on the word “reserve.”

“We’d been holding some of our best units in reserve, so from a marketing standpoint, we thought it’d sit well to sell them with the idea of a reserve vintage wine,” he said.

His brokerage was retained by the developer, an affiliate of New York’s Vornado Realty Trust, to help sell the 71-unit property, which first came to market five years ago.

Procuring the wine turned out to be a simple task. All Domineum had to do was walk upstairs to talk to its first buyer, John C. Cushman III.

Cushman, chairman of New York real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield Inc., bought two bilevel penthouse condos at the property in 2010 and merged them into one after selling his San Marino estate. He also co-owns Santa Barbara winery Zaca Mesa with his brother Lou Cushman.

John Cushman said he was happy to work with Domineum to provide cases of a 2009 Roussanne (white) and a 2010 Z Three (red blend) to market the property. Plus, he thinks the campaign is working.

“It’s good for them and it’s good for us,” Cushman said. “The people who are looking at Granite Park as a possibility, I think they find us all pretty classy.”

Asking prices for the two- and three-bedroom condominiums at the project run from between $970,000 and $2.1 million, depending on size and floor plan.

– Bethany Firnhaber

No posts to display