One man's struggle with 'green dream' condo

New York

STANDING beside one of the two waterfalls that he had built into his duplex condominium on West 15th Street in Chelsea in Manhattan, Colin Rath smiled. The waterfalls feed a narrow koi pond that runs the length of the living room and was scooped out in the shape of a scale replica of China's Yangtze River.

"It's so peaceful in here," he said.

What he wanted to do next door, however, is another story, one that he has now told in a self-published book. Whether it was a case of tremendous misfortune or terrible miscalculation is hard to say. What the episode does reveal is the remarkable excesses that prevailed a decade ago, and perhaps again today, across New York City.

"We went to hell and back I don't know how many times," Mr Rath said, reflecting on the two decades he spent on the block, half of them trying to build his "green dream", an eight-storey boutiq…