Alan Wilzig envisioned a nightclub when he designed his 7,500-square-foot luxury Tribeca townhouse nine years ago. He built it with an automated lighting system so that every light in the house can be normally lit, or, with a touch of a button, any of 64 colors. He and his wife, Karin Wilzig, moved there in 2005, and a few weeks later his first child was born.
“The first time the house was bathed in colored light wasn’t for some disco party on a Saturday night, it was for the bris of my son,” he said. “We made it baby blue, and then made it pink for the baby-naming of his sister. The reality is, it became a successive series of pink Hello Kitty birthday parties.”
Wilzig, like his real estate, leaves an impression. A depiction of him in “The Wolf of Wall Street” made him famous, but what really went wild was his protest of the portrayal on Facebook. The story was picked up internationally.
His foray into the condo market in Tribeca was covered by The New York Times, and now his attempt to sell it without an agent for $43.5 million is making headlines as well. The three-level home is accessed through an underground passageway from the condo building next door. The home has bullet-proof windows and a security and entertainment system, plus a cellphone-boosting system.
Listing photos show off Wilzig’s collection of cars and motorcycles — he is a semi-professional driver and enthusiast and built a full-size racetrack on his farm near Hudson, New York.
It’s difficult to overstate the level of customization in the home Wilzig designed along with his wife, a jewelry designer. As an example, the living room includes a 14-foot aquarium filled with glass beads and stocked with white butterfly koi, which glow in various colors based on your lighting choices.
“You want to see what the fish look like in turquoise? Put two taps on the screen,” he said. “It’s really cool. If you pick red, basically it looks like red fish swimming over a Martian planet.”
Wilzig, a successful entrepreneur, said he and his family decided to spend more time on the farm outside of the city, and he said if he sells his townhouse, he plans to get a smaller home somewhere in Manhattan. They could live there forever, he said, because beyond the $120,000 a year he pays in condo dues and taxes, the mortgage is so small. "It’s an asterisk," he said. "It’s a rounding error compared to the value of the home today.”
Still, he said, maybe the next owners will get around to that Saturday night disco party he always meant to have.
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