‘Office’ space
ACTRESS and producer Mindy Kaling (right) is about to take a hit on the sale of her downtown Manhattan loft. The two-bedroom, twobathroom home at One Kenmare Square, at the crossroads of Soho and Nolita, hit the market for $2.75 million last September and is now in contract. Kaling bought the 210 Lafayette St. spread for $3.1 million in 2017. The contract price isn’t clear, but we hear it’s less than the purchase price. What is clear, however, is that Kaling bought the apartment via a trust named for a favorite film character of hers: Meg Ryan’s Kathleen Kelly in the late former New York Post writer-turned-Hollywood-filmmaker Nora Ephron‘s 1998 hit film, “You’ve Got Mail.” A year later, Kaling transferred ownership of the apartment from the Kathleen Kelly Trust to a shell company, Kathleen Kelly LLC. Kaling loves the Kathleen Kelly character so much that she even named a bar after her in “The Mindy Project.” “The name of the bar that our characters go to is called Kathleen Kelly’s. She was so stylish in that really understated hot Manhattan librarian way,” Kaling once said. Kaling also made her name in shows including “The Office.” That’s where she met B.J. Novak, with whom she’s had an “insanely complicated relationship,” which could also be the subject of a romcom. There have even been rumors that he’s also the father of her two children. (Earlier this week, Novak presented Kaling with the Norman Lear Achievement Award at the Producers Guild Awards, where he praised her and publicly talked about their “complicated relationship” for the first time.) The 1,166-squarefoot unit has 10-foot ceilings and views of the Williamsburg Bridge leading to Brooklyn through wall-to-wall windows. The home is a “pindrop silent refuge,” according to the listing from brokers Carl Gambino and Reilly Adler of Compass.