[Slowhand] Donated by Eric Clapton

[John Mills]

http://www.observer.com/2008/real-estate/what-gas-texas-mogul-streams-4-3-m-moby-and-pals-stuy-square-spread

What a Gas! Texas Mogul Streams $4.3 M. to Moby and Pals for Stuy Square
Spread
by Max Abelson
October 14, 2008

This article was published in the October 20, 2008, edition of The New York
Observer.
There are certain things about Moby-his nonthreatening electronic music, his
bald and bespectacled whiteness, his cutely named old tea shop on Rivington
Street, his pro-vegan, pro-Tibet, pro-environment advocacy work-that makes
one think he doesn't take kindly to Houston oil or gas moguls.
The kind of person who, in interviews, produces sentences like "The primary
cause of deforestation in the third world is to create grazing land for
cattle. Then there's the amount of waste that is produced by factory
 farming" is also the kind of person who wouldn't want to sell a massive
East Village sprawl with 23-foot-high stenciled ceilings to an NFL co-owner
and natural gas options broker.
But New York real estate is a funny thing.
According to city records, gas broker Javier Loya and his interior designer
wife, Lucinda, have bought a four-floor, six-room, three-bedroom unit at
Landmark 17, a Victorian Gothic building on Stuyvesant Square that once
housed a convent and rehab facility. The couple paid $4.35 million to a
group of investors that included Moby.
Their new place includes a room that was originally the convent's chapel.
Texans apparently love buying up New York's holiest residential spaces; last
year, The Observer reported that Dallas computing and oil magnate Sam Wyly
spent $3.05 million on an apartment in a converted Washington Square church.
Mr. Loya is not only the president and CEO of CHOICE! Energy ("one of the
first institutional natural gas brokerage houses following industry wide
deregulation," its Web site says), but a co-owner of the Houston Texans. He
made the news earlier this year when the NFL was reportedly looking into
allegations that Mr. Loya is a high-stakes gambler.
The listing with Elliman's Tamir Shemesh and Ami Rothschild says the place
has 3,486 square feet of interior space (plus a tad more outdoors), and also
includes the curious phrase "Donated by Eric Clapton in 1992." Mr. Shemesh
explained this week that Mr. Clapton had paid to have the chapel room in Mr.
Loya's new apartment refurbished when the building was a Hazelden
rehabilitation facility.
The deal, filed in city records late last week, closed in July.
mabelson at observer.com