Realtor to the Stars, John Bolaris, Got Joel Embiid Into His $2 Million Condo
Well shit, John Bolaris, who shamelessly plugs his private, black label real estate services publicly on Twitter, was profiled on Billy Penn today and dropped the tidbit that he got Joel Embiid into his condo, which he’s renting for a cool $9,000 per month:
John Bolaris wants to know if I’ve tried the duck. Plenty of it left, he says, and he’s right. The “Oriental Station,” as it is titled in the email inviting me to this party for “high net worth individuals,” features a chef with a massive knife presiding over a golden-brown bird with a long, drooping neck and beak straight out of a Chinatown window display.
It takes up an entire room of this 40 story-high Two Liberty Place condo that will soon belong to Joel Embiid. I’m serious. The Sixers center will rent this space for about $9,000 a month with the possibility of buying it in the near future for about $2 million. Presumably he will not keep the Oriental Station.
Embiid’s not here on this night as mostly suit-wearing men network, eat duck and drink brown liquor (yes, the brown liquor station gets its own room, too) because this party isn’t about him. It’s about the man who helped orchestrate the deal for the apartment. It’s about John Bolaris. The celebration marks the launch of his new real estate brand, TCS Black Label.
Oh, and Raffl– he got Raffl a place, too:
Bolaris’ phone is ringing. Again. Over a 90-minute conversation at Joe Coffee in Rittenhouse Square, he takes four calls. This time it’s Raffy. That’s what he calls Michael Raffl, one of the Flyers’ top players.
The Flyers are getting back into town after the offseason. Bolaris helped Raffl get the penthouse at The Griffin, a new luxury apartment complex near Broad and Chestnut. On the phone, he reminds Raffl to check out the virtual game system on the Griffin’s roof.
“I talk to (Claude) Giroux, Brayden Schenn,” Bolaris says. “(FlyGhost and the younger guys will get to know me.”
OK, so this is great and all, and I’m genuinely thrilled at the prospect of Bolaris placing calls to his high-end clients while huffing and puffing on a treadmill – like he did when he called to pitch me on doing a radio show with him – but isn’t the whole point of black label services to be discrete? The first rule of Fight Club is don’t cheat on Angelina talk about Fight Club, right? Still, I’ll be impressed if he lands Ben Simmons. Good luck cracking that egg. I imagine Team Simmons has set up a series of shell companies to rent properties across the tri-state area just to throw people off the scent of Superstar.