After an Apartment Fire, This Event Designer Found Positivity in Plenty of Pink
Photo by Ori Harpaz
For more than a decade, event designer Jared Reichert of the Reichert Consult was perfectly happy calling the West Village home. But after he ventured out to Palm Springs during the pandemic, suddenly his studio apartment seemed way too small. When he returned to New York City, he decided to stop by a friend’s two-bedroom, two-bath place in Chelsea that was up for sale. “I knew I needed more space. So we made a deal,” says Reichert.
The duplex not only boasted more square footage than his studio, it had a private deck. Sure, the apartment hadn’t been updated since the ’90s and had the espresso-colored kitchen to prove it, but Reichert saw the potential to fix it and got to work on renovations. Then, one month before move-in day, disaster struck. “We were in the middle of construction when I got a text from my contractor telling me to call him,” Reichert recalls. “There was a fire.” A blaze destroyed the roof deck, and the water to put it out badly damaged the rest of his home. Reichert was forced to start over.
