So listen. The story is this. Phoebe Gates — and yes, that Gates — has gone and leased herself a penthouse on East 18th Street in the Flatiron, newly renovated, up top where the pigeons used to be, for her shopping app called Phia. The company pulled in thirty-six million dollars from celebrity investors, the kind of money that makes a landlord stop asking for references and start offering you the good keys. You know, the ones that actually work on the first try.
Now I cover property. I cover the borough. But Manhattan is Manhattan, and when a dynastic-wealth play drops a penthouse lease in the Flatiron with that kind of seed money behind it, you sit up straight on the stool and you pay attention. Phia is an AI-powered shopping app, they say. It finds you deals. It negotiates on your behalf. It is, in the words of the coverage, designed to save regular people money. Regular people. Who are signing leases in Flatiron penthouses. I'm not saying anything. I'm just reading the room. The very tall, freshly renovated room.
Here is where I got to be honest with you about my cousin Sal and the truck. See, Sal has a brother-in-law who does commercial moving — legit operation, Greenpoint, two trucks — and Sal got the idea that if a tech company is moving into a penthouse, they need their Aeron chairs carried up somehow, right? So Sal borrows one of the trucks, parks it on 18th, and I am supposed to file this column from the scene while simultaneously steering the moving contract Sal's way, because I know the building super's nephew from a parking dispute story I covered in '22. Guaranteed angle. Guaranteed cash. That is what Sal said. That is what Sal always says.
The building is real. Newly renovated is real. The neighborhood is changing fast — Flatiron has been shedding its mid-market tenants for years, and a splashy AI startup with celebrity money and a famous surname taking the top floor is exactly the kind of trophy lease that signals what the next wave of this corridor looks like. Smaller operators, the ones who've held on since before the last two rent cycles, they look up at that penthouse and they do the arithmetic. The arithmetic is not generous.
Phia says it wants to democratize smart shopping. Whether a thirty-six-million-dollar penthouse operation democratizes anything is a question worth sitting with. But the app is real, the lease is real, and the ambition is written all over that roofline.
Sal's truck got a ticket on 18th. The super's nephew didn't pick up. The moving contract went to somebody out of Long Island City who had the right insurance, which Sal did not. The truck is back in Greenpoint. I am back on the stool. The penthouse is still up there.