Dentist's $25M marble- and gold-drenched Brooklyn home now the priciest for sale in the borough
A former dentist imbued his passion for old-world architecture into every nook and cranny of this palatial Bay Ridge home. The aggressively gilded property listed for $25 million on Tuesday, the New York Times reported, which StreetEasy notes makes it the most expensive single-family home on the Brooklyn market.
'Ever since listing it, my phone has really been blowing up,' listing representative Alexander Boriskin told The Post. 'A lot of people have questions, and they're mesmerized by the photos.'
Advertisement
13 The limestone exterior of the Bay Ridge home was imported from Italy.
Courtesy of Zoe Wetherall
13 The striking foyer is coated in gold leaf, painstakingly applied by artisans.
Courtesy of Zoe Wetherall
13 No expense was spared on the ornate interiors. Even the fireplaces feature precious stones.
Courtesy of Zoe Wetherall
Advertisement
Boriskin, of Douglas Elliman, is marketing the one-of-a-kind home with fellow brokers Ammanda Espinal and Michael Lorber.
Dmitry Epelboym, a Ukraine-born dentist, purchased the Bay Ridge lot with his then-wife Lidia for $1.3 million in 2010, according to city records. A century-old Victorian, owned by Blondie keyboardist Jimmy Destri, occupied the property. Not for long, though.
Epelboym tore the old home down and spent the next eight years building the opulent European palace of his dreams. He sourced imported marble, handpicked limestone from Italy and hired artisans to apply gold leaf by hand. The cost was considerable.
Epelboym told the Times he 'stopped counting after $10 million.'
Advertisement
13 The foyer's stained glass starburst fills the room with light.
Courtesy of Zoe Wetherall
13 Imported marble frames the inlaid floors of the dining room and malachite decorates the fireplace.
Courtesy of Zoe Wetherall
13 Appliances in the chef's kitchen are hidden behind elaborate panels.
Courtesy of Zoe Wetherall
13 A dining area with sky-blue accents connects to a terrace.
Courtesy of Zoe Wetherall
Advertisement
13 The office evokes old-world opulence with a coffered ceiling and sculptural sconces.
Courtesy of Zoe Wetherall
The 14,000-square-foot home's marble foyer quite literally reflects its owner's style. Massive mirrors line the walls alongside immense gilded millwork. Twin marble staircases are complemented by gold-leaf railings and a stained-glass starburst on the ceiling lights up the room.
'This is unique. I don't think anything has ever been on the market like this, certainly not in Bay Ridge,' Boriskin said.
The surrounding neighborhood is no stranger to large properties, Boriskin said, but they tend to change hands through families rather than the market.
He believes the home will sell to someone with an affinity for its current style, rather than a vision for change. The cost of building a comparable property today, Boriskin said, would be far more pricey than its $25 million ask.
The time and expense put into the opulent residence is on display in every room.
The dining and living room fireplaces are adorned with precious stones like lapis lazuli and green malachite, and the ornate chef's kitchen is bedecked in burgundy quartz. Gilded floral reliefs and sconces held aloft by griffins decorate the stately office.
13 Even the television is gilded in this large bedroom.
Courtesy of Zoe Wetherall
Advertisement
13 Purple tiles complement the floral bathroom.
Courtesy of Zoe Wetherall
13 The spa is lined with golden marble.
Courtesy of Zoe Wetherall
13 The tiled Turkish hammam spa.
Courtesy of Zoe Wetherall
13 A private movie room.
Courtesy of Zoe Wetherall
Advertisement
The listing advertises six large bedrooms, but it's the basement where maximum relaxation is achieved.
Epelboym's ambitious build included excavation for an 11-foot-tall basement level. The subterranean space features a personal spa with a sauna, a marble-lined Turkish bath, a hot tub and a rustic bucket shower. It also includes a home theater and a large ballroom. The latter boasts a chandelier rescued from a historic Tennessee riverboat, the Times reported.
Epelboym, an admirer of historic European architecture, filled the home with materials sourced on trips abroad. He told the Times he was particularly inspired by 'the palazzos of Italy and iconic places like St. Peter's Basilica.'
Advertisement
Epelboym's successful dental practice of three decades ended in 2018 when he pleaded guilty to insurance fraud. He told the Times he was eligible for reinstatement a few years later, but chose not to pursue it. Epelboym, now divorced, spends his time abroad. According to Boriskin, his travels keep him away from home 10 months out of the year.
'This home is now ready for its next chapter,' Epelboym said.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time Magazine
8 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
SAP CEO Christian Klein on Building Bridges in the Age of AI
SAP, the 53-year-old German tech giant, builds software for virtually every business function, from supply chain and resource management to finance, sales, and human resources. Its products are used by over 440,000 customers worldwide, including 98 of the world's 100 largest companies. Taken together, its client base generates over 80% of global commerce, according to the company. At the helm sits Christian Klein, 45, who has been at SAP since 1999. 'You can say it's a big minus or a big plus when you're spending your whole career in one company,' he says. 'I started here as a student. And I still know people from back then. We have four generations here working for SAP—it's a company of 110,000 people.' Under Klein's leadership, the company has accelerated its transformation into a cloud-first enterprise, with cloud revenue accounting for over half of its total revenue in the first quarter of 2025. Meanwhile, SAP is embedding AI into its core products with the goal of becoming the "#1 enterprise application and business AI company." SAP is one of the most valuable public companies in Europe and made headlines when it took the top spot in March. Klein spoke with TIME on June 4 about his success as a leader, how AI is changing enterprises, and the difference between power and influence. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. What have you changed your mind about since becoming sole CEO in 2020? Our software helps to build bridges and facilitate global trade. We have multinationals in the U.S. and China, in Asia—everywhere—doing global business. Five years ago, when I came into this job, in my perspective of the world everyone was a winner. I saw democratic values in most parts of the world, and said "ah, that will never change." Because I'm still reasonably young and have not lived in times like this, I never thought things could change so fast—at least when it came to global trade. But here we are. I have to deal much more with all of the geopolitics than I had to, say, five years back. That definitely has changed. Why do you think you're good at your job? When you're a CEO, over the years you learn that when you believe "I have the right strategy on a nice PowerPoint—I have written it all down—the rest is just about execution," you're completely wrong. Especially when you're a European company with many stakeholders, you need to think about strategy first from the customer-perspective. Everyone says that [laughs], but you really have to make sure that you're hitting that nail. Otherwise, you could steer the company in a completely wrong direction. You need to make sure everyone—your employees, shareholders, the workers council, and so on—is excited, committed, and passionate about strategy and where you're leading the company. You have to be a bridge builder: to make sure everyone is involved and understands the strategy, and everyone is moving in the same direction. Otherwise, things can fall apart very easily. In your May CEO address, you said we can think of AI agents as 'digital coworkers.' If AI agents can robustly function as digital coworkers in the near-future, why hire humans at all? Here's an example: we just had financial earnings at SAP. Now, AI gives me certain simulations and predictions on how the year could end, given all of the trade conflicts and the uncertainty out there in the market. Would I fully trust AI to say "this is how you should put out your financial guidance for the rest of the year?" No: I still feel we need a human being at the end of the chain who can make slight adjustments, incorporating their past experience. Or think about selling software. When you are traveling the world, the cultures are so different. When I walk into a customer meeting in Japan, it's different from walking into a customer meeting in Germany or the U.S. AI can give me a beautiful sales pitch or a great demo, but at the end it's human beings who need to understand how to position it, how to emotionally talk about it, particularly across different cultures. And I don't see an AI yet that is able to do that—at least not better than a human being. You point to emotional connection and cultural understanding. AI is already highly-persuasive and can understand emotional nuance. A key limit is that current AI systems lose coherence over long time periods. If that changes—and the same system can run for months or years at a time—do you still think AI won't be able to do these parts of the job? You're right, emotional intelligence will get better and better. No doubt about that. But at the end of the day, there needs to be someone in the company you can hold accountable. I don't want to see SAP in the headlines, with a customer saying "I relied only on SAP AI agents to close my books or to run my supply chain, and they completely screwed it up. Despite AI doing 99% good work, it didn't play out as expected.' Ultimately, I'm convinced there must be some human beings still in the mix. Do I expect to need the same amount of developers, salespeople, and consultants in the future? Definitely not with the job profiles that they have today. But do I still need other jobs that are coming up—more data scientists? More people thinking about the future of the industry? Yes, absolutely. It would be an illusion to believe AI will help and drive more productivity, but the workforce will still look the same. That will be absolutely not the case. But I also can't imagine a workforce only with digital workers. Can you imagine a scenario where in five years time, 90% of your workforce is gone, so you have closer to 10,000 employees than 100,000? Oh, that is tough. In certain job profiles, I can absolutely see they can be 60% to 70% digital. In others, for example, take audit: Of course, you have policies as a company, but with every policy—for example, the E.U. Data Act, which I don't like so much—there is always a gray zone. You ask five lawyers and five large language modules about interpretation—does this contract adhere to the E.U. Data Act?—and you get different answers. It's like when you have issues with your back and you ask five doctors, and they come with five different root causes. These things will still exist. So in these jobs, I don't believe that there will be only digital workers. In other jobs, I definitely see a much higher share. It really depends on the job profile. Do you think you'll live to see an AI system do every part of your job? Part of it. I need to make a lot of decisions every day. They are sometimes pretty logical decisions, where you just look at the facts. But sometimes there are tough decisions you have to make using your emotional intelligence. There are certain market trends which may not be captured by the facts, but you talk to people, to other stakeholders, and you make a different decision. So I don't believe that a CEO can be purely digital in the future. Sometimes you're still making decisions based on your gut feeling. What are the biggest bottlenecks to enterprise adoption of AI? In the enterprise world, where we are setting up our agents, you need 100% accuracy. So for example Joule, our digital assistant, cannot mess around with compliance checks on travel and on sourcing, or on directing the flow of materials. People are betting their jobs and their companies on our software and on AI. This needs 100% accuracy: if you as a tech company don't understand the business process—if you don't have the data or you can't access all of it—that is a big issue. This is a big obstacle for many companies: understanding how to apply the technology. The good position of SAP is: we are running these business processes, we know the rules and workflows, we have the data. Others who are more on the infrastructure and hardware layer… they don't have the business context. They're missing the data. Is accuracy the biggest challenge? Or are there others? The second piece is on data. Every company you walk into has their data siloes: there have been trends with collecting data and creating data lakes, but no one has solved the problem of making all the data match. And when it doesn't fit, AI can't do magic immediately to say, "I 100% understand how this data fits together and I can correlate it to produce good results for the company." The third piece involves regulation, which often kills innovation before it gets started. Certain parts of the world need to be careful to not only see risk, risk, risk with regard to AI, but also the upside for the economy. What do you think is the appropriate regulatory framework for AI? Here's my pragmatic view. In the European Union—it's good that we have a union, I'm all in for it—we have AI regulation in many member states, and then the E.U. puts another regulation on top. The result is confusion, different interpretations, and before companies or startups can use the technology to race against others in the world, it's already game over. That is the problem. I'd say: have one framework for all of Europe, and then give some freedom within this framework, especially when you are early in the development and testing cycle—you cannot do harm in this early phase. Of course, the moment when you bring it to market and to scale, there must be regulation. But don't regulate the technology! Regulate the outcome, so AI is unfolding in the right way in the chemical industry, the automotive industry, the defense industry. But don't regulate the technology, because then you regulate technological innovation, which is never good. You need to see you are not living on an island here in Europe. All of these tech players—we are the only large tech player in Europe, but there are many startups—there is competition everywhere, and we cannot give these companies and startups a disadvantage when it comes to speed of innovation just by over-regulating. If you were 22 today, fresh out of university, what would you do? At 22, I still wanted to become a professional skier. I would try it again. It's my passion. I love to be in the mountains, I love to ski, and I'd try to turn that passion into a profession. So you wouldn't set out to become a CEO? I wasn't planning to become the CEO when I was 22 years old. That goal developed over time. I don't like it when you're too early on, saying "I need to be the CEO." I'm more on the 'first deliver' side: prove yourself, prove that you can work in and deliver great results as a team, and the rest will follow. It was only when I became the chief operating officer of SAP, and I considered our transformation into a cloud company, that I developed the goal of becoming CEO. We had a strategy, and the software was instrumental for that. But I saw it was not only a piece of technology which would make transformation work. It's also an understanding of the culture, and the tone from the top. You need to understand: where do you want to go with your company? Do you want to be a cloud-pure SaaS company, or do you want to still be a legacy? What does it take? Then you can connect software and technology and AI to it. So it was only around 2017 that I thought, 'oh, I could be the CEO of SAP. I have a vision for this company on how to move it into the next century. It probably sounds a little bit odd, but it's not the power and the responsibility that drew me to the role. It was about: 'you can influence a lot of things to create a great future for SAP.' I saw how we worked and what was needed. What do you think distinguishes power and influence? Becoming a CEO and believing that now you're making a decision, and you have the power, so everyone will just follow, is probably the biggest mistake you can make. You can put a lot of policies in place, you can put more pressure, but people will not just automatically follow. You need to over-communicate in times of change to convince people. When we did this drastic change and our share price collapsed five years back, I couldn't just say, "Oh, now we did it. The strategy is clear. I have the power now to tell you exactly what to do." You need to influence people. You need to convince them. (To receive weekly emails of conversations with the world's top CEOs and decisionmakers, click here.)
Wall Street Journal
8 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
EU Prepares to Pause U.S. Counter-Tariffs for 6 Months
The European Union is preparing to suspend a package of retaliatory tariffs it had intended to impose on goods from the U.S. had it failed to secure a trade deal with President Trump by Aug. 1. 'The commission will take the necessary steps to suspend by 6 months the EU's countermeasures against the U.S., which were due to enter into force on Aug. 7,' commission spokesperson Olof Gill said on Monday. Both sides are still working on finalizing a joint statement on their trade deal, and the suspension will be formally adopted on Tuesday, he said.
Yahoo
11 minutes ago
- Yahoo
'It was just a matter of when, not if' – mixer brand Thomas Henry, Undone non-alc spirits embark on US push
The team behind two European brands – Thomas Henry mixers and Undone non-alc wine and spirits – are targeting expansion in the US. Eighteen months ago, Ralf Huep, the German investor who is the majority shareholder of Thomas Henry, acquired a majority stake in Undone. Thomas Henry has built a presence in 60 markets in Europe and Asia. Similarly, Undone, with its range of non-alc spirits, wine and RTDs, is in 20 countries, again mostly in Europe and Asia. Sean O'Rourke, who holds the roles of US partner and head of growth for Thomas Henry and Undone, sat down with Just Drinks to discuss the brands' plans to crack the US, competing with UK mixer brand Fever-Tree and demand for non-alc spirits Stateside. 'The US is the number one drinks market in the world,' O'Rourke says. 'It was just a matter of when, not if. With Thomas Henry having such a strong presence in Europe, it was all the right timing for both brands to now take it over to the US.' Dean Best (DB): The brands are initially targeting nine states (including California and New Jersey), plus Washington, DC. Sean O'Rourke (SO): We'll have 15 by September and then I think we'll have 20 to 25 by the end of the year. Our goal was 35 by the end of 2026 and then it's close to 50, full national distribution, by the end of 2027. It's a very well financed and very aggressive plan. Starting in the north-east is where a lot of us are based, so that had a lot of the strategy. Beyond that, another big part of it [for Thomas Henry] was Fever-Tree had the minority investment by Molson Coors. A big driver for that investment was they moved their business over to Molson Coors. We did make the decision to build Thomas Henry in more independent distribution, go state by state. A majority of Fever-Tree's business was with Southern [Glazer's] but where it wasn't – New Jersey with Fedway, Badger in Wisconsin, the wine merchants Hayden Beverage in Idaho – there's a lot of great homes that lost Fever-Tree so that drove a little bit of the decision-making to be a solution for these folks and really be aggressive and backfill business. From there, it's filling out core markets, so we'll do the East Coast, we'll get to the West Coast and then some of the core markets in central like Illinois and Texas, which are both coming on by September. We'll fill everything else out from there. DB: Is one brand a priority over the other in your in terms of investment or focus? SO: It's literally dollar for dollar, both brands putting in equal investment. With the non-alcoholic movement and the fact that Thomas Henry and Undone make two- and three-ingredient non-alcoholic cocktails really easy, they sell to all the same places. It's been really natural to go to market together but they certainly have their own lives, too. You'll see some crossover on some of our digital marketing campaigns, some of our e-commerce offerings, where we bundle the brands together but you'll see both brands have their own independent voice and then, behind the scenes, we're powering them as one unit. DB: When would customers be set to see either product in bars or in stores? SO: I was just on a call before we joined about some new cocktail menu placements we got in Illinois this week. You'll start to see it at bars and restaurants and independent retailers imminently. By this year, it'll be slowly but surely getting into the cocktail menu restructurings as they come up. Going into next year, I don't want to say the brands are going to be ubiquitous, we're still early but they'll be much more prevalent and have a much broader reach in our core markets. DB: What bigger accounts are you eyeing in terms of retail and the on-trade? SO: There's a capability and investment to go to chains but a core DNA to be patient and build an independent [customer]. You'll mostly see us in independent on-premise for probably the first year or two. Then the hard thing is making the decisions on what's the right account for national chains and, in addition to national chains, I'll throw in control states. PLCB [Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board] has reached out to us, Idaho has reached out to us and Target has been really strong and aggressive in building out non-alcoholic sets. The interest has been there. It's just being patient. I'd rather open up 100 independents and merchandise them super well then maybe jump right into, you know, Target. But the interest is there. The category is super, super hot. DB: Are the products made in Europe? SO: As of now, all of our products are still produced in Germany and we're importing into the US but we're slowly developing co-manufacturing here. Today, our blends for our Undone RTDs are finished, so we're about to do canning tomorrow. Our RTDs are the first thing we're producing here in the US and then, by probably 12 months from today, we'll have full co-manufacturing for both brands here. We're doing a lot of our RFPs and research. DB: Is that being sped up because of the uncertainty around tariffs? SO: I guess the truth is, yes, but we had already been talking to co-manufacturers and that was already part of the strategy. For Undone, we always had the 2026 goal in place and we knew we were going to do our RTDs from the start here because it's expensive and not very green to be shipping cans across the world. Thomas Henry's initial plan was maybe 2027 to have it but getting on the same path as us was definitely part of the tariff consideration. We're not passing along any of the tariff spends to our consumer. We held price. When we have co-manufacturing here, it's not going to end up in a lower price for the consumer. It'll just make our margins more whole. DB: What impact does Molson Coors investing in Fever-Tree have on Thomas Henry? SO: It was exciting for us for multiple reasons. One, it's validating that the category is of interest for M&A. I think it also validated -- we had already made this; we were in the middle of building out this US plan when that happened. It also was just more illuminating, like, 'Yes, you build a strong drinks brand in America, that's really where the consumer is [and] that's really what it takes to get acquisitions if that's the goal down the line, so, okay, Fever-Tree just proved it can happen.' And then it's been a really great blessing with wholesalers and retailers. It's been a great opportunity for us to move fast with both retailers and wholesalers. DB: On Undone, how would you describe the market in the US for non-alcoholic spirits? SO: ANA [the adult non-alcoholic beverage market] was nothing a few years ago. It's already surpassed $1bn here in the US. It's supposed to be a $5bn market by 2028 and an $11bn market by 2030, so the next five years in ANA is going to be wild. The next five years in ANA is going to be wild. Looking at crystal balls, you are going to start to see what we call mimics – Undone's a mimic, trying to taste like a spirit – and then there will be either you can call them 'alts', you can call them functional beverages. There's not a lot of aligned terminology yet. It'll be really interesting to see how the category grows and what the consumer gravitates to – mimics or functional beverages by category: beer, wine, RTDs and spirits. I think it's going to be at least 2% of the size of the US spirits market and I think it'll be here forever, right? I don't think it's a fad. What I do think is there's obviously going to be a bubble of brands as we're seeing right now in whiskey and craft. The craft spirits movement started 15-plus years ago and it's just really having its bubble burst and we're losing some brands. I think it's going to happen much quicker in non-alcoholic. These days, it's so easy to launch a product [but] people don't understand how expensive the drinks market is, whether it's alcoholic or not. CPG and drinks is the most expensive category to brand build in, between building out a team, marketing, all the trade spends that come with going into chain retail. A lot of people are unprepared for that. I think you're going to see some great brands that don't make it because they didn't budget accordingly. DB: How do you best ensure that Undone isn't one of those brands that will burst? SO: Being well-financed is a big part of it. We have a strong budget and we're building an aggressive plan but it's thoughtful. I'm not going to jump into a chain unless I'm sure that it's going to pull off the shelf. We're going to focus and build in on-premise and independent liquor store retail first and so I think that's going to be helpful. Two, our pricing is where the consumer wants it to be and so I think that'll help us. I think the packaging is very clear, the messaging is very clear. Then, from a focus standpoint, we do have a broad portfolio, but, in time, we're going to focus our energies and our marketing dollars with what the consumer is pulling. The beauty of having your own e-commerce is you see that consumer data. If we have to optimise our portfolio, we have that mindset and understanding. I think just being patient, being thoughtful, studying the category. DB: There's been a lot of debate about moderation and Gen Z's consumption of alcohol. Given that Gen Z has been held up as one of the drivers behind demand for alternatives to alcohol, how do you see consumer demand developing? What types of consumers are you going to be targeting? SO: It's always hard to go broad but, right now, Millennials are really driving the dollars of ANA. You hear all the buzz of Gen Z but I think it's moderating Millennials who are the highest percentage of dollars right now. I think young Millennials and older Gen Zs are – a couple hyper-segmented categories – is where we're putting our early dollars. Gen Z is going to drink alcohol dollar-wise the same amount as we do What's really going to have to happen for us and other brands is you have to own your consumer, be authentic and get in with them. Broad answer, I think ANA is for everybody. I think everybody is going to be drinking it. It's going to be part of the ritual and I think it's more just about moderating than it is anything else, just being more mindful, like at work events and other things. I think this is going to be a global movement, it's going to be for moderation but I think everybody's going to be in it. Gen Z is going to drink alcohol dollar-wise the same amount as we do. We've seen it for the last 15 years: I don't think premiumisation is going to stop and so I do think dollars and spirits will stay strong but that's going to continue to be less and less consumption of spirits. You're paying and having a few less drinks and drinking nicer stuff. I think it's going to be that way in ANA, too. I just look at the adult beverage market now: I don't think any consumption is going to stop. I'm going to pull ANA into that. I'm going to pull Delta-9 here in the US into that. Consumers are going to drink and go out and drink a lot. It's just now there's these two huge new categories that'll steal share from spirits but they'll also steal share from soft drinks and soda. DB: With the proliferation of different types of non-alc drinks, how does your team try to ensure that your products are bought again and again? It might be difficult to build that repeat purchase. SO: Five years from now, what I say could be totally different, because functional takes over and all that. For now, I think that some of the brands that are marketing the loudest and doing really well like Ghia, De Soi et cetera, they are owning in that very niche, very functional, adaptogen segment. While I personally know about Lion's Mane mushrooms and other things, the consumer still doesn't. For us, I think there's a lot of consumers on the sidelines, one because of messaging and two because of price and three because the availability isn't at liquor stores where they're buying. We're saying we are going with flavours. You look at our offerings on our RTDs: it's piña colada, it's paloma, it's Italian spritz. Flavours that people are already drinking. We're really pushing on that zebra stripe moment. We're really positioning ourselves to be – I don't want to say the NA for everybody – but really the NA for people who want to drink incredible brands, incredible cocktails, just without the alcohol some of the time. We're positioning ourselves to be making great-tasting liquid from dealcoholised spirits, so it's a really close comparison and you're not losing any of that flavour and that experience. You're just losing the intoxication. We're going to mimic the best-performing cocktails and categories. "'It was just a matter of when, not if' – mixer brand Thomas Henry, Undone non-alc spirits embark on US push" was originally created and published by Just Drinks, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
