Big Real Estate, out and proud. (Think Progress/yfrog)

So we already know that the most powerful (business)woman in the city, Mary Ann Tighe, works in real estate. What about the city's most powerful homosexuals, both female and male? That was the subject of the latest issue of The Observer, "New York's New Power Gays," and a good many of those on the list work in our beloved industry, including, arguably, our city's No. 1 gay, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

She signs off on all the ULURPs; has oversight of the budget and agencies like DOT and City Planning; and she is good pals with a lot of the city's biggest builders, so we're going to claim her as one of our own.

Real estate has not always been the most gay-friendly of fields, but that hasn't kept many gay New Yorkers from making their ways there. Also on our list are:

8: Marc Jacobs, fashion designer (he owns half of Bleecker Street)

10: Robby Browne, Corcoran senior vice president

17 and 18: Andrew Kirtzman and Seth Weissman, developers of Fire Island Pines

24: A. Laurence Kaiser IV, founder of brokerage Key Ventures

27: John Stryker, president of the Arcus Foundation (the philanthropist is also a practicing architect)

33: Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance, the city's biggest BID

34: Don Capoccia, BFC Partners (the Edge, Toren) managing principal

As if there were any question that real estate is finally coming around, even the Empire State Building got in on the Pride act this weekend, lighting up in a rainbow of colors, as captured by Think Progress in the picture above.

It took two years and two staggering price cuts, from $46 million to $24.5 million, before Swiss currency speculator Daniel Forcart came around in December and signed a contract for the duplex. The price was $19.9 million.

Pretty much everywhere else in the world, this deal would have closed by now. But not in the world of New York City co-operatives. The board balked for reasons that remain unclear, whether because Mr. Forcart did not have the proper social credentials or the right price. It is impossible to know, because, like all other co-op boards, the one at 778 Park need not disclose its reasons for rejection. This, along with a handful of other nasty turns at buildings around the city, has brokers grumbling that co-ops are more intrusive and cockier than ever.

"It's an antiquated system not suited to modern life in a cosmopolitan city," Douglas Elliman's Raphael De Niro complained over coffee on Hudson Street recently.

During the real estate boom, condos colonized the city. Glassy spires shot up everywhere from Harlem to Brighton Beach, and dour old hotels were spruced up in bare-knuckled conversions (think the Plaza and the Stanhope). Even with tens of thousands of new apartments in the city, the buyable housing stock shifted only about 10 percent, from four co-op units for every condo to a ratio of three to one. With white flight running in reverse, yuppies and BroBos, along with their fashionably enlarging broods, swept across the boroughs in search of permanent housing. Thanks to all the new condos, it became easier than ever to avoid the onerous boards and their anvil application packages. And, best of all, those probing, embarrassing interviews.

As a result, some co-op boards, growing jealous of their chintzy brethren across the park or downtown, loosened their collars. New neighbors, ones who not so long ago would have been seen as "those people," who would have been lucky to be shown the apartment, let alone get an interview, found themselves with entree to some of the city's nicer buildings. This may not have been the case at the tippy-top, but brokers certainly say there was a relaxation of standards, not least because there was just so much money floating around. If letting some riffraff in meant your home was worth 10 times what you bought it for a decade ago, why not!

Then the music stopped, the panic set in, and this rarefied world teetered on the brink of collapse. Many of the city's co-op boards became stricter than ever before, requiring bigger down payments, more escrow and higher renovation fees. Picky, picky, picky. "Many of these buildings require a certain lifestyle, and you just couldn't have people sneaking their art and antiques out the service door just to afford the maintenance," said Mary Ellen Cashman of Stribling.

Yet there was also a countervailing force. As the fortunes, monetary and otherwise, of those in the coveted prewars continued to dwindle, some had no choice but to try and liquidate the homes they had worked so hard to get into. Many boards would never have allowed such things, damaging as a fire sale would be to their home values. With the power to set prices in their buildings, and the ability to reject at will, few boards thought twice about turning down buyers deemed to be paying too little, even as the sellers squirmed.

As this anxiety grew, there were also cases where boards relaxed their standards. After all, for a time in 2008 and 2009, it looked like the sky might never stop falling. Sure, boards were still fussy as ever regarding financial credentials--you've got only 10 times the price in liquid assets?--but the "panache" of the buyer, as one broker put it, was less relevant for once.

"Certain buildings are nervous, certain people were desperate," said A. Laurance Kaiser IV of Key Ventures. "And once those people get on the board, they're the worst of all! 'It's my candy store, and you can't have any of it.' The hypocrisy of it all."

And there is the rub. Now that the economy has begun to recover, and buyers are rushing the market once again, boards feel less desperate. They feel empowered--downright vicious, even. They can play a little catch and release, if the fish is not the perfect whopper. This, combined with the fact that co-ops have yet to loosen their still-spooked, post-Lehman financial rigor, means it is becoming more difficult than many brokers can remember to get their buyers past boards.

And it is not just the aerie likes of the Astor duplex. Consider the two brothers from an impeccable family, both recent London School of Economics grads. They had taken to a quirky penthouse duplex a block from the High Line in West Chelsea and gone to contract in December for $3 million, just over the asking price. Even though it was an all-cash offer, the buyers were never interviewed, and it took until April for the board to get around to telling them they would not be getting one.

It was the first time the buyers' broker had a client turned down in seven years--until it happened again later that week. "These are two very clean-cut, together young men, and if the board had seen that, I'm sure it would have changed their mind," the broker said. "Instead, all they saw was the application. All they saw was two 20-something guys who wanted to buy a penthouse in Chelsea and party all the time."

Yet for all the complaining New Yorkers do about co-op boards, this power grab could be their death rattle. Two bills are in the works at the City Council that would greatly curtail their authority. Intro 188, the "Fair Cooperative Procedure Law," which seeks to regulate the application process and require a yay-or-nay decision within 45 days, has members and representatives of the all-volunteer army up in arms.

"I have heard boards say that they don't have enough time to review the package and meet the buyers and deal with all of the building issues and still work their day jobs and spend time with their families, so they are just going to require that the brokers make certain that the buyers are qualified," Stuart Saft, president of the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums, wrote in an email. "It will be very interesting to see this play itself out. The boards seem to think that is the least the brokers should do considering that they are getting a $150,000 commission on $2,500,000 apartments." (And not only work and family, but those summers in the Hamptons and the holidays throughout!)

The Real Estate Board of New York, under pressure from its large broker membership, has recently flipped on the legislation. "There is the issue of the lack of a response, and I don't know if it's a big issue that happens very often, but if you get enough brokers together, it starts to sound like it," said Michael Slattery, senior vice president at the board. "If you've provided the information and gone through the interview, there is a sense you should be told up or down."

The board's support could finally push the bill, which has been kicking around the Council for a few years, out into the open for some debate--though it is not clear whether it would pass, and there is still a good deal of work to be done on it. As the bill's sponsor, Lew Fidler of Brooklyn, put it, "The bill needs to be tightened up in some areas and loosened in others."

The legislation that is far more controversial, and has only mixed support in the real estate community, is the "Fair and Prompt Co-op Disclosure Law," Intro 326. It requires co-ops to do the unthinkable: provide a written response outlining a board rejection.

"Does every corporation have to do this?" Corcoran broker Eileen Roberts said. "I would be in favor of that only if every business had to disclose every decision it made. Why should a housing corporation be treated any different?"

The bill surfaced before, in 2006, but never got very far amid widespread opposition. It has been taken up now by Brownstone Belt City Councilman Brad Lander, after he was notified by a cadre of civil rights groups. They argue that discrimination is still rampant in the city's co-ops. By forcing boards to spell out their decision, Mr. Lander hopes they might think more deeply about why they are rejecting a prospective neighbor. "It's a very simple bill," Mr. Lander said. "We're not changing the standards. It is still illegal to discriminate--just now you would have to discriminate and lie if you wanted to do it." He acknowledged that he only has the support of "a large group of civil rights groups" and a smattering of boards. "But I think they can be very persuasive on this issue."

Still, what if it were not about equal rights but really all part of some grand conspiracy by the brokers, to disembowel the co-op system simply so they can sell more apartments and make more money?

"It would make a huge difference," Mr. De Niro, the Douglas Elliman broker, said. "First, they wouldn't be able to turn down so many deals. And it would provide more information on what to put in front of them and what not to. You assume you have a slam dunk, and the next thing you know, everyone's wasted six months of their lives."

Some brokers blame their colleagues and not the boards. "Only a dodo would show everyone every single apartment," Mr. Kaiser, one of the city's most veteran co-op brokers, said. "You have to know where to take your client." Another broker said that a "silly bill" is not going to make anyone a better broker.

Others are ambivalent, so long as the bill does not hurt the cachet of the co-ops themselves. "I tell everyone we should embrace the co-op system, love it," Warburg's Richard Steinberg said. "It is the one thing, more than any other, that saved us from turning into Miami, because there were far fewer speculators."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

That is not to suggest that Mr. Tighe and his wife Kimberly got a good deal because of any insider connections. It simply seems the invisible hand worked against John Bartlett Coleman, who is best known for  transforming the Navarro on Central Park South into the new Ritz-Carlton.

Mr. Coleman first listed the grand four-bedroom, four-and-a-half bath duplex with Sotheby's Meredith Smyth and Serena Boardman for $7.75 million in May 2009. A. Laurance Kaiser bagged the listing a year ago for $6.9 million, cut the price to $6.5 million in September, and it has now sold for $5.825 million, according to city records. Nicely done, Mr. Tighe.

SLIDESHOW: The Upper East Side Duplex That Inspired the Ritz. >>

For their effort, the couple, who are leaving the far less grand 985 Fifth Avenue, have secured their own Ritz-Carlton in miniature. As People declared in April 1983, five months after the hotel opened, "What's good enough for Coleman had better be good enough for his guests, for the Ritz is really a larger version of his elegant East Side Manhattan duplex." So if you have ever been to the Ritz, now you basically know what the Tighes' new home is like.

Mr. Tighe declined to comment and Mr. Kaiser could not be reached for comment, but his listing notes "a sweeping staircase leads to the grand Living Room with fireplace and three long French windows while a large formal Dining Room adjoins providing an ideal flow for entertaining." Like all prestiguous Upper East Side co-ops, "high ceilings, beautiful moldings, and classic architectural details are all part of the residence's elegant and traditional appeal."

Also like all prestiguous Upper East Side co-ops, units rarely move. According to StreetEasy, the last purchase in the building was the duplex downstairs, a three-bedroom, five-and-a-half bath number that Myrna Ronson bought in 2008 for $7.75 million.

See! We told you Mr. Tighe was a heck of a dealmaker. Though Ms. Ronson is no slouch herself, having set the co-op sales record at 2 East 67th Street. Surely she could afford a million or two extra.

SLIDESHOW: The Upper East Side Duplex That Inspired the Ritz. >>

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

What I miss much more are the real estate brokers themselves, especially the few at the top. They were eloquent, acrobatic, cruel, connected, imaginative, well bred and ill-mannered, sometimes all in the same afternoon.

There were all kinds. Kirk Henckels was a good-natured equestrian who always wore a bow tie. Carrie Chiang was a competitive ballroom dancer. John Burger liked talking on the phone about the subtleties of Park Avenue co-op design, even if he was poolside in the Hamptons.

Dolly Lenz was the genius power broker who explained over lunch at the Four Seasons that she doesn’t have tirades; she just cuts people out of her life. After I wrote a story that described how the recession had made her into a mere mortal, she stopped talking to me.

A. Laurance Kaiser IV, whose father died after leaving his Park Avenue club and stepping into a pothole, sold a single duplex at 834 Fifth Avenue four times—first for $225,000; then to John DeLorean; then to Reginald Lewis, the first African-American allowed into a so-called Good Building; then to Carl Icahn’s old chief investor, who paid $33,444,500.

“They lie, the brokers—they lie to brokers, they lie to clients. There’s lying. Lying,” Linda Stein, probably the first New York celebrity real estate agent, told me in the spring of 2007. “There is no high except the money, which is extremely taxable.” She was found murdered by her assistant that October.

And Edward Lee Cave was the pristinely genteel agent whose eponymous brokerage was taken over last year by Brown Harris Stevens. “When I first started, all the doormen had white gloves,” he sighed then. “And they don’t anymore. It’s called change.”

At 9,350 square feet, the L-shaped apartment spans the whole length of Eloise's legendary reststop, with 110 feet of Central Park South skyline viewed through windows reaching almost the full height of the 13-foot ceilings. Once the extravagant reception rooms of the storied former hotel, the 14-room apartment, which can entertain up to 500 people, is the largest in the landmark condo conversion.

Apartments of this maximum occupancy level don't come along every day, which might explain Stribling's $39 million asking price when the apartment went back on the market last September. But that was mere Cracker Jacks compared to the $45 million that faulty Italian businessman Luigi Zunino planned to pay for the spread until the unfortunate financial hiccup whereby, at closing time, he couldn't muster the millions. Mr. Zunino, who put $9 million into renovating and combining three units into one, hoped to resell the apartment for $100 million, but his inability to actually close on the original purchase somewhat stickied that plan.

Now, six months after the apartment's relisting and $9 million off that listing price, the State Suite has closed for $28 million to an undisclosed foreign buyer. A. Laurance Kaiser, of Key Ventures Real Estate, co-represented the buyer with his associate Craig M. Dix. Though bound by a non-disclosure agreement regarding the identity of the buyers, Mr. Kaiser did expound with enthusiasm on the apartment itself, telling The Observer matter-of-factly, "It's just the most spectacular apartment you've ever seen. There'll never be another like it, it just doesn't exist. It's drop-dead." 

"There are no interior rooms. Nothing is on the shaft; all of them are outside rooms!," he added. A fact described slightly more pretentiously in the listing as, “rooms arranged en enfilade along Central Park and Grand Army Plaza."

Mr. Dix, Mr. Kaiser's associate, spoke about the successful sale in more general terms. "There is certainly a renewed interest in New York real estate," he said, "especially from foreign buyers whose currency is devaluing against the dollar. I think they want to make an investment in the States in something tangible, and this seems like a really good time to do it.

The sale is quite a coup for the depressed Plaza, whose headline-making abilities of late have been restricted to fuming basement retailers and dissatisfied condo owners. But Mr. Dix assures us timing is everything. "It may be that people who initially bought into that building with an expectation of where the market was going are unhappy with how things turned out, but, in my opinion, there are great deals to be negotiated at the moment. It's an icon of New York; foreigners love that; you can mail a letter to your Aunt 'care of The Plaza' from anywhere in the world and it will get there!"

cmalle@observer.com