Good morning. It's Wednesday. We'll get a glimpse of a $3,200-a-night hotel room. We'll also look at the ethics complaint that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo filed against the state attorney general, Letitia James. |
 | | Katherine Marks for The New York Times |
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But the owner of the Aman New York is not just any hotel chain. Its hotels have members-only clubs that cost $200,000 to join. And the Aman New York is tiny in comparison with a chain hotel like, say, the 1,878-room New York Hilton Midtown. The Aman New York has only 83 guest rooms. The bathrooms in some of them seem larger than some New York apartments, our reporter Heather Murphy told me. |
The Aman New York — on Fifth Avenue at 57th Street, diagonally across from Trump Tower — also has 22 apartments. They are reached through an entrance that is separate from the one to the hotel and "looks kind of like a vault in a James Bond movie — all bronze and solid," she told me. "I went to go look at the door and was told to please step back." |
Upstairs is a five-level penthouse that real estate news sites have reported was in contract for $180 million, a price that the New York real estate appraiser Jonathan Miller said would make it the third most expensive home ever sold in the United States. |
As for the hotel, Heather wanted to experience "the Amanness of it all" — to understand why billionaires and celebrities are so devoted to the Aman brand and its resorts, which are scattered across 20 countries. |
She found that at the Aman New York, the $3,200 rooms have at least 745 square feet of space, along with gas fireplaces, retractable flat-screen televisions and oak floors. From the room a guest can go to the Aman's jazz club, its greenery-filled terrace or its cryotherapy chamber, where the noise levels are podcast-studio quiet — although, as one staff member acknowledged, most podcasters cannot afford the Aman. |
"What I found by hanging out and talking to people about it is international visitors, when they come to New York, they want that sense of a prototypical New York experience," she said. "They're intrigued by being close to Central Park. The Museum of Modern Art is nearby, and people with tons of money like being near all the shopping. Bergdorf's is there, and Louis Vuitton." |
But views from the hotel rooms at the Aman New York? She said they won't take your breath away. Unlike Aman resorts overseas that look out on UNESCO heritage sites, "the primary view that these people get for their several thousand dollars is the Trump Tower. And traffic." |
In recent weeks, the Aman chain has put the building up for sale. Bloomberg said it could go for around $600 million. In confirming the report, Anna Nash, Aman's chief commercial officer, said a sale would be subject to a long-term management contract with Aman. "The hotel, club and residences will remain as they are," she said. |
Meaning, expensive — so expensive that it's impossible not to be troubled by the contrasts that exist almost side by side in New York. "I took the subway home" after one visit, Heather told me, "and when I got off the subway in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, there was a bunch of homeless people sleeping outside. It's startling to imagine the discrepancies in wealth." |
And the gap may only widen. "People who are used to going and spending $30,000 a day, they haven't been able to do that" in the pandemic, she said. Now, according to several luxury travel agents she interviewed, "they're not only ready to spend it, they're excited to." |
One item they could buy at the Aman New York is a custom-created New York fragrance. "It didn't smell like any New York smell that I have smelled before," she said, "but New York is a city full of smells and I am not a member of $200,000 clubs, so it's possible that the smell in $200,000 clubs has more of this undertone of cement intersecting with cinnamon that I detected." |
Enjoy a sunny day with highs in the low 80s. Tonight will be clear with lows in the mid-60s. |
In effect until Sept. 26 (Rosh Hashana). |
 | | Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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 | | Victor J. Blue for The New York Times |
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Not quite 13 months after he left Albany, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo filed a state ethics complaint against Attorney General Letitia James, who oversaw the inquiry into sexual harassment claims that led to his resignation. |
In 48 pages, Cuomo told the courts' committee that disciplines lawyers who violate rules of professional conduct that James had "her own politically motivated and self-interest-driven agenda." He said the rules she had broken included one barring lawyers from engaging in conduct "involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation." |
The filing with the attorney grievance committee was Cuomo's latest move in his drive to salvage his reputation. Cuomo, who earlier in the year spent millions on television commercials that sought to rehabilitate his image, recently emailed supporters an opinion article from The Daily News and spent $60,000 promoting it in Facebook ads aimed at reframing the narrative about why he left office. The article raised questions about some of the claims James had made against him. It also suggested that he may have been the victim of excessive #MeToo zeal. |
He won a court battle last month when a judge in Albany said he could keep $5.1 million from a book deal that a state ethics board wanted him to hand over. |
James's six-month investigation detailed multiple instances in which women accused Cuomo of inappropriate and illegal behavior, including unwanted touching and an unsolicited kiss; in one instance, he was said to have groped a former aide's breast. |
He apologized for making any of the women feel uncomfortable but has repeatedly denied touching anyone inappropriately, while his lawyers have sought to undermine the women's accounts. |
Five district attorneys began investigations after James's report was issued. All five concluded that there were insufficient legal grounds to bring criminal charges against Cuomo, though several said they had found the women to be credible. |
Delaney Kempner, a spokeswoman for James, said in a statement that Cuomo had "resigned after an independent investigation revealed that he preyed on multiple women who worked for him. |
"New Yorkers are ready to move forward and close this sordid chapter in our state's history," Kempner added. |
The committee works in private, often at a sluggish pace. Last year, it temporarily suspended former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who served as a lawyer for President Trump before and after he left the White House, while it considers disciplinary charges for his role in misleading the public about the results of the 2020 election. |
I grew up in an apartment building across the street from Queens College. The playground was a marvel, with monkey bars, a wooden corral and benches ringing the base of the giant oak where older women passed the day in the shade. |
There was one boy who liked to throw a tennis ball as high into the air as he could while the rest of us played around him. |
Once, a praying mantis landed on the asphalt. Everyone ran to look at it. |
One kid said it was a $50 fine if you killed a mantis. Fifty dollars was all the money in the world to us, so we gave that insect plenty of room, all the while marveling at its alien-ish features. |
The inevitable happened, of course: The tennis ball, flying up toward the moon, came down squarely on the bug. |
We all scattered as fast as we could, and I spent the rest of the day hiding in my room, waiting for a knock on the door that I was sure was coming. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
| Ashley Shannon Wu, Francis Mateo and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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