WHR: Warwick Hotels honcho snaps up a condo by Central Park

A global hotelier has scored a Manhattan home near where his company first put down roots.Richard Chiu, founder of the chain Warwick Hotels and Resorts, whose initial acquisition in 1980 was Midtown's Warwick Hotel, purchased the three-bedroom condo on Columbus Circle for $17.3 million, according to a property record that appeared in the city register Tuesday.The 3,900-square-foot unit in the south spire of the two-towered condo complex long known as the Time Warner Center and now called the Deutsche Bank Center, went into contract May 30 and closed Sept. 5, says its deed, which details that Chiu bought the unit with his wife, Ann Chiu.The arrow-shaped apartment offers a formal dining room, floor-to-ceiling windows and Central Park views, including from the primary suite, whose bath is tucked in the unit's point.The condo's seller was a trust linked to Mikhail Kurnev, the managing partner of Forum Absolute Capital Partners, a residential development firm. Kurnev, who built dorms for New York University earlier in his career, paid $9.9 million for the apartment in 2004, records show.He has tried to sell the unit before, according to listings site StreetEasy. In 2012 Kurnev put the property on the market for a hefty $50 million before removing it two years later without any takers. He may have rented out the home in ensuing years; at one point it was listed for $30,000 a month, according to the site. The apartment came back up for sale in January 2024 at $22 million before closing this month for more than 20% less than that amount.Paris-based Warwick Hotels, whose nearly five-dozen properties include outposts in France, Fiji and Saudi Arabia, owns and operates about 20 of its buildings, according to company profiles. Among the owned addresses is the Warwick, at 65 W. 54th St. A predecessor company owned by Chiu, Silver Autumn Hotel Corp., bought the 36-story, 426-room property, which was formerly a Loews site, in 1980, according to the register.An historic prewar building from 1926, the Warwick also faces Sixth Avenue, a location the hotel's marketers note is along the route of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.In 2023 Chiu's company refinanced the Warwick with a $70.5 million loan from Citi Real Estate Financing, tax records show. The hotel's least-expensive rooms this week started around $280 per night.A phone message left at Forum's Westchester office was not returned by press time. An effort to reach Warwick's press office was unsuccessful. And Stephen Ferrara, the Compass agent who marketed the unit, declined to comment.