Designer's high-concept condos may be too hip for Hub

Philippe Starck, the international design superstar who once fashioned a baby bottle resembling a perfume dispenser for Target, has struck gold by selling condominiums in Manhattan and Miami Beach. His ''Downtown" project in the former headquarters of JP Morgan on Wall Street, featuring a bowling alley, 24-seat screening room, and rooftop reflecting pool, sold more than half its 326 units within three weeks of hitting the market in 2004. In Miami Beach, all 289 condos at his sleek, ultramodern Icon South Beach tower, which opened that same year, sold out during construction.

But so far, Boston isn't buying what Starck is selling.

Marketing began almost a year ago, but buyers have agreed to purchase just six of the 26 condos Starck is designing at a former police station in the South End, said Stephen Chung, design principal for Urbanica Inc., the Boston development firm that is collaborating with Starck's London firm, Yoo Ltd. Agents in Boston's clubby real estate community who have spoken with the developer and sales agents said even those six agreements are not firm commitments.

Lackluster sales can result from several factors, including rising mortgage rates, construction delays, and high prices. But real estate specialists and prospective buyers say Starck's design may be too edgy for buttoned-down Boston.

Starck's ''New York aesthetic" is a ''sophisticated design," said Kevin Ahearn, president of Otis & Ahearn, a Boston real estate firm. ''It's going to take a little bit of time for buyers to understand it."

Buyers ''have that extra hoop to jump through, which was that you really loved the Philippe Starck design," said Alan Markesich, a program director for Jammin' 94.5 and Kiss 108 radio and South End resident who considered buying a unit in the project but changed his mind. ''I'm just not one of those people," he said.

Boston ''is not New York, it's not Miami," said Tony Longo, founder of condodomain.com, a website that lists luxury Boston condos for sale. ''It's a more conservative town."

A smiling plastic yard gnome greets visitors to the model unit for Starck's project, dubbed YooD4 because the building served as the Area D-4 police station from 1932 to 2002. Gilt-framed mirrors in the dining room flash the words ''sexy" in pink lights and ''star" in blue. Walls are not always flat: A rectangle recessed into one wall is painted daffodil yellow for an otherworldly effect.

YooD4 is uncompromising Starck, down to the minimalist bathroom faucets he designed. The major feature of the building is a four-story Winter Garden, reminiscent of the internal courtyard in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

Starck designed two interior options for buyers:

The ''Nature" option has bamboo floors, teak kitchen cabinets, and raised porcelain sinks in the bathroom. Marble tile is now de rigueur in luxury bathrooms, but Starck did it bigger and bolder, selecting one-foot-square Cervaiole marble from Tuscany.

The less expensive ''Urban" option is white on white: white oak floors, white laminate cabinets, white ceramic tiles, and white walls.

Urbanica has not begun to market the project aggressively, so ''why get stressed" about sales, asked Chung. He is confident prospective buyers, even those with Boston sensibilities, will find the finished product appealing. He said that while Starck's hotel interiors are ''exaggerated and ramped up," the designer prefers ''quiet" interiors for his condos. Indeed, Starck rejected the idea of putting glowing neon sheep on YooD4's ''green" roof, Chung said. ''He said, 'Are you guys crazy?' "

Chung also said the slower housing market is responsible for lagging sales, with fewer speculators quickly buying and flipping condos for profits. In the current market, homebuyers ''are going to live there," he said, and ''they bring tape measures. The market and the people are so different."

But real estate agents said that because the project was initially overpriced, it also missed out on the sizzling 2005 condo market. Developers typically raise prices as a project attracts interest during construction and builds sales momentum. But some of YooD4's asking prices have been lowered since last summer: The highest-priced unit, 22, is currently on the market for $1.71 million, down from $1.77 million in July, according to downtown real estate listings. The price of the two-bedroom Unit 13 was cut $200,000, to $1.1 million.

Chung said price reductions were also achieved by converting interiors from Nature to Urban. Unit 14, initially designated as a Nature unit, was priced at $1.27 million but sold as Urban for $1.1 million.

Agents contrast YooD4's sales to the strong sales at Atelier | 505 across the street, where luminaries like Natalie Jacobson rushed to buy the luxury condos, which sold out before the project was completed. Prices at Atelier ranged up to $3.3 million.

''We're hitting our limit as far as the full-service, super-high-end luxury market the South End market can bear," said Dan LaBarre, a Keller Williams Realty agent. Atelier ''has covered that niche."

Another theory is that Starck was overexposed in Boston by heavy 2005 marketing of his other local project, Parris Landing in the Charlestown Navy Yard. Of 367 units at Parris Landing, 310 sold in 18 months, said the broker, Boston-based Otis & Ahearn. Parris Landing was Starck Lite: Starck provided an optional design package for condo interiors, but his primary contribution was to common areas, where he included sculptures such as the lobby's oversized rubber duck.

Markesich, the prospective buyer, liked the idea of moving to a contemporary condo a stone's throw from his penthouse brownstone. But he soon learned that Starck left no room for him to select finishes, and he found the oversized marble ''generic in a high-end way."

Chung said he and the sales teams are amenable to negotiating over the details. ''Maybe people didn't want to pay for all that Starck finish," he said. ''We said, 'We'll take it out. It'll make it more attractive in terms of price.' "

Kimberly Blanton can be reached at blanton@globe.com.