The Concorde (220 East 65th Street)

Philip Birnbaum designed more large Manhattan apartment buildings than almost any architect of his generation, and The Concorde is a characteristic late example: an efficient masonry tower with a planned site rather than an ornamented elevation, where the architecture that a resident actually experiences is the approach — the drive, the garden, the double-height lobby — rather than the façade. Birnbaum also designed the plaza, and the city's public-space inventory records him in both roles.

The plaza deserves a note, because it is routinely misunderstood. The building carries a mapped privately owned public space of 1,325 square feet, open around the clock. The city's own profile is unusually blunt about which piece of ground that is: not the planted garden with the water feature behind the fence and locked gate, and not the semicircular drop-off drive, but the garage entrance driveway to the east. In practice this means the amenity residents value most — the private garden — is genuinely private, while the space the zoning bonus obliged the developer to provide is a driveway. Buyers who assume the garden is a public easement, or that the public has a right to the drop-off court, are working from the wrong map.

Above grade the building runs 26 storeys over roughly 264,000 square feet of residential area. The declared unit count is 287 apartments, but four decades of combinations have reduced the number of actual front doors — recent Department of Buildings alteration filings recite 264. Combinations at this building are filed under the Department's standard combination protocol, which means the paper trail exists and is worth pulling for any merged apartment. Layouts run from studios through combined three- and four-bedroom apartments, with terraces and balconies on a number of lines and penthouse units at the top. Because the site is through-block, exposures differ meaningfully by line: north over East 65th, south over East 64th, and the higher floors open above the low-rise fabric in every direction.

Full service, with a union staff covered by the Local 32BJ collective bargaining agreement and a superintendent's apartment owned by the association itself. The building spends heavily and visibly on two things that show up in the audited statements and on the sidewalk: landscaping, at roughly $170,000 a year, and contract security, at roughly $165,000. Both are consistent with the site's planted grounds and its two street entrances.

The association's commercial income is small but structurally interesting. A dry-cleaning tenant pays $2,450 a month. In April 2018 the condominium licensed roughly 200 square feet of sub-cellar space to a medical realty entity for 49 years, to April 2067, for a $75,000 upfront fee plus escalating annual payments — a long-dated income stream carried on the books at more than $1.9 million of future minimum receipts. Separately, six medical units exist within the condominium as owned units; buyers should expect professional traffic at the lower floors and should read the by-laws on the medical units' access and common-charge allocation.

The reviewed statements report capital work, without establishing the absence of deferred work. The reported projects included Local Law 11 and exterior repairs, a building-wide riser replacement, roof and walkway repairs and a clubhouse roof project, funded by consecutive special assessments of roughly $973,000 and $525,000 and by transfers into the reserve fund. Department of Buildings records line up with the accounts: a façade and Local Law repair job with a suspended scaffold and sidewalk shed in 2024, replacement of two combination gas-and-oil burners on the low-pressure boilers in 2025, and a parking-garage repair filing in January 2026. The garage filing matters — garage structural repair at a building of this age is a real capital category, and the ownership of that unit determines who pays for what.

The reviewed audit discloses no commissioned reserve study or adopted overall funding plan for future major repairs. Its year is not specified here; obtain the dated report, any subsequent study and the current capital plan before assessing funding needs. That disclosure does not establish today’s position or predict the next assessment.

Sale mechanics. Per the condominium's own sale-procedure memorandum, a complete package goes to the condominium's counsel no less than 20 days before closing. The processing and document-preparation fee is $1,800 on an all-cash purchase and $2,000 where the purchase is financed, and it is the seller's obligation. Move-in and move-out fees are $500 each for a studio or one-bedroom and $600 each for a two- or three-bedroom. Buyer and seller each post a $1,000 refundable damage deposit with the building manager before a moving appointment is scheduled, returned after a common-area inspection. Moves are scheduled Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. only.

Rentals. Permitted, with a rental application package and rental procedure administered by management, and a smoking rider required on all new leases. For an owner who wants the option to let the apartment, this is the operative difference between The Concorde and the prewar cooperatives a few blocks west.

Smoking. Worth reading in full before purchase, particularly the provision that a purchaser who bought after August 28, 2018 may not smoke on a terrace or balcony even though a longer-tenured neighbour may.

Pets and resale contribution: The September 23, 2026 management schedule lists pets upon approval with a pet security deposit; obtain the amount and full conditions. Any resale capital contribution remains unestablished here. Confirm both against the current house rules and by-laws.

Recent sales

Recent closings at this building, from The Roebling Research Library. Prices are the transfer amounts recorded with the NYC Department of Finance; apartment-level detail is checked against the building’s own file in The Roebling Research Library before publishing.

Market read. Most recent trades (2026 to date) cleared a median $1,448/sf (floor-adjusted) across 7 sales. Floor-adjusted means each sale is restated to a constant mix of floors, so the figure can differ from the plain median of the sales listed above. Median listing discount 3.8% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 1-01419-7503; each condominium apartment is its own tax lot). Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified in The Roebling Research Library. Not all transactions cross-verify with ACRIS records — sponsor and LLC purchases sometimes record at stipulated values rather than market price; square footage from recorded condo declarations and offering plans.

You are buying real property, not shares. No co-op board interview; the board's right is a right of first refusal exercised through the sale package, not an approval. Confirm financing and ownership-entity rules in the current declaration and bylaws.

Read the assessment history before you read the common charge. Two consecutive special assessments funded the recent capital cycle. The common charge alone understates what ownership has cost here in recent years. Ask for the last three years of assessments and the current year's budget.

Ask for current capital planning. The reviewed audit reports no study of remaining useful lives or adopted funding plan; establish its date and request any subsequent work. Your attorney should ask the managing agent directly what capital projects are contemplated and whether the garage repair work now filed is fully funded.

The garage is somebody else's unit. Parking is not an association amenity you are buying into. Confirm current availability, waitlist and pricing with the operator, and do not assume a resident rate exists.

Understand what the public plaza is and is not. The mapped POPS is the garage driveway. The garden is private. If open space is part of your reason for buying, walk both before contract.

Check the smoking rider against your own plans. A purchaser closing today falls under the post-2018 rules, including the terrace and balcony restriction. If you intend to let the apartment, the rider attaches to your tenant as well.

Lead with the structure. Deed ownership and permitted leasing by owners, in a neighbourhood dominated by cooperatives, is the product. Say it plainly in the first paragraph of the marketing, and confirm pied-à-terre, entity-purchase and financing rules in the declaration and bylaws before claiming them.

Budget the seller-side fees into the net. The processing fee is yours, $1,800 or $2,000 depending on financing, plus the move-out fee and the $1,000 refundable deposit, and the package is due 20 days before closing. Build the calendar backwards from the closing date. Run the Seller Closing Cost Calculator with those in.

Present the assessments with their scope of work. The assessments are tied to Local Law 11, the riser replacement, the roof and the clubhouse; confirm completion and payment status before presenting them as done. A buyer's attorney will find the assessments regardless; the seller who presents them alongside the documented scope controls the narrative.

Correct the unit count. City data says 281 and building filings say 264; the condominium declares 287. Getting the number right early signals a prepared file.

If you're considering The Concorde, also evaluate:

• 200 East 65th Street — Bristol Plaza; the amenity-led condominium on the same block, with a pool and health club
• 248 East 65th Street — the Grace; the third condominium on the block, at a smaller scale
• 160 East 65th Street — the Phoenix; the 1968 full-service alternative one block west
• 340 East 64th Street — the St. Tropez; a ground-up condominium one block south with comparable postwar amenity
• 301 East 66th Street — a mid-1950s building converted in 1990; the closest conversion-era comparison
• 200 East 69th Street — Trump Palace; the larger, later condominium tower in the same corridor
• 400 East 67th Street — the Laurel; the new-construction condominium alternative
• 315 East 68th Street — the large 1931 cooperative on Second Avenue; the prewar share-ownership alternative
• 301 East 69th Street — the Mayfair; a condop where cooperative mechanics apply