Want a NY condo with a personal shopper?

[NEW YORK] On Central Park South here, a luxury building is offering its residents direct access to Bergdorf Goodman's buyers, who can find them that special accessory from Paris. In Tribeca, a developer hired educators from the 92nd Street Y to design the basement playroom.

But perhaps nothing quite says modern chic like having a poet on board, like Howard Altmann, who wrote a short work, Once, as part of the marketing of the Schumacher, a new condo on Bleecker Street: "Once," the poem closes, "In the lifetime of a neighbourhood / An opportunity emerges / To make a singular imprint / In how we live."

It is old hat that a well- known architect and interior designer are required to play in New York's field of ultra-fancy real estate development. But with the intense competition to capture the US$3 million-plus buyer, the cast of characters and add-ons involved in the city's most luxurious new condominiums is growing ever longer.