COME HERE OFTEN?(The Talk of the Town)

One recent evening, in the barrens of the Financial District, the hotelier Andre Balazs was throwing a party for an imaginary friend. His name was William Beaver, in reference to the downtown intersection upon which Balazs is building William Beaver House, a fifty-two-story condominium "specially designed," its promotional materials assert, "for New York's highest achievers." Beaver--who is actually a spiffy cartoon rodent, given to international travel and fine brandies--is the project's mascot as well as proto-inhabitant. His high achievements extend to every field but one: monogamous relationships. Recalling a coed dorm or the stew zoos of the nineteen-sixties, Beaver House is meant to be a place you can bring someone (or someones--many units include showers big enough for three). If not, pickup opportunities are part of the floor plan. See you at the sunken conversation pit!

Beaver House is a ground-up construction, and so, by the time of the launch party, the conversation pit was not yet operational. Neither were the fireside wireless Internet, the billiard table, the basketball court, the movie theatre (champagne service, "cinema beds"), or the glass-bottomed hot tub (visible from a drive-in lobby). Apartments are expected to cost between eight hundred thousand dollars and $2.4 million. The complex will not be equipped with a wine cellar, because, as Balazs said, "at this price point, people aren't interested." Anyway, he hopes to appeal to the sort of New Yorker found, these days, less often in Manhattan than in Williamsburg or Hoboken, and perhaps more partial to Jager bombs than Pouilly-Fuisse.

"When I first heard about this place, I thought, I've got to live here," a prospective resident said, sitting on a purplish daybed in a model one-bedroom that had been set up in a former bank that is serving as Beaver House's sales office/occasional night club. He introduced himself as William. Another guest, Helen, asked his last name. He replied, "That's Gaines--like capital gains."

Shimmying on pedestals, clad in black-and-yellow leather unitards, were a troupe of Beaver go-go girls. But Gaines--a mojito man ("Summer, winter, I drink 'em all year round") who had had to settle for a screwdriver--was undistracted. "I heard this sofa cost eighty-five thousand dollars," he said, before expressing disappointment that the bathtubs were not top-of-the-line. "What I was ...