Halstead Property

Mentioned in this Article:

Ivana Tagliamonte
Exec. Vice President
Village Office

Manhattan Transfers

Strictly Ball-Room

Six Feet Under Creator Alan Ball Buys $2.5 M. Chelsea Loft 

By Max Abelson

The hit HBO series Six Feet Under met its end in 2005, and ever since, its creator, Alan Ball, who got his start in the New York theater scene, has been pining for home.

“I sold myself to television and moved out here,” he explained on the phone from California. “I mean—I love L.A., but I miss New York terribly.”

This summer, after 11 years of living in the Hollywood Hills, the 49-year-old Oscar-winner dried his tears on a 2,215-square-foot loft in Chelsea, which he bought for $2.495 million.

But the move isn’t only personal, he said.

“When Six Feet Under ended, it was such an exciting thing to dive into different projects,” he said. “It was five years of peering into the abyss.”

Filming is slated to begin in New York this fall on Mr. Ball’s adaptation of the Alicia Erian novel Towelhead, and in January his first play in a dozen years, All That I Will Ever Be, hits the New York Theatre Workshop.

“Rather than stay in a hotel for five months, why not get a place?” he said. “I’ve wanted to get one, and now I have the perfect place to do it.”

His new apartment, in the 11-story Chelsea condo called the Dance Building, has 53 feet of downtown-facing windows that open onto a private balcony.

“The condo is a beauty and the neighborhood is so convenient,” he said. “The production company is two blocks away!”

He’ll keep his place in the Hollywood Hills, which gives his three dogs room to roam. And despite the size of his new loft, he said, his dogs won’t be staying with him when he comes to New York.

The building takes its name from the venerable Dance Theater Workshop, which makes its home in the building’s bottom three floors.

Halstead broker Ivana Tagliamonte, who represented seller Mitchell Schnapp, said that the 12 apartments above aren’t troubled by the pitter-patter of little feet.
 

“They have double-insulated walls and floors,” she said. Her client made a packet on the place: He paid $1.325 million for the loft in July 2003.
 

Mr. Ball was represented by Brown Harris Stevens’ Norberto Bilgoraj.

Monday, September 18, 2006