Aman Resorts Is Bringing $50 Million Condos to NYC

Vladislav Doronin, the chairman and chief executive officer of Aman Resorts, the super-luxury hotel chain, is standing in the middle of a filthy concrete husk of a room in midtown Manhattan. “Look at this!” he says, gesturing through the dirt-stained windows of the 24th floor of the Crown Building, whose 4th through 26th stories he’d purchased with a partner for about $500 million in 2015. (The bottom three stories, which are for retail, are owned by other companies.)

“It’s not just the location,” he says, nodding to the fact that the Fifth Avenue building is on one of the most expensive, if not sought-after blocks in the world. It’s also the view. “I prefer to stay here, closer to the ground, to see real New York,” he says. “If you were on the 70th floor of some building, you’d just see clouds.”