Lofty goals. (Trinity Real Estate)

Last Friday night on far west Spring Street, the Ear Inn was crowded as usual. A mix of neighborhood regulars and happy-hour-indulging co-workers from the nearby loft buildings—architects, ad execs, programmers, writers—were crammed around the mahogany bar imbibing. Others were gathered outside around benches on the uncrowned sidewalk two blocks from the West Side Highway.

The bar has been there for 195 years, but forget asking for some sort of mixological cocktail that could be found at hundreds of establishments citywide pretending at this sort of authenticity. Above the bar, beyond the shelves of dusty liquor bottles, are glass carboys, ruddy green and brown glass, the size of harbor buoys. They held wine more than a century ago and disappeared into the bowels of the basement, only to be excavated in the 1970s when the bar was made over by a band of eccentric artists. One of their rank tended bar until five years ago. He has since moved upstate. Things change, then they don't.

“We’ve gotten the holy trinity of Pret a Manger, Starbucks and Hale & Hearty soups, but otherwise the neighborhood looks the way you imagine it did 100 years ago,” said James Parvin, a segment producer at NBC who lives in a loft he converted himself on nearby Charlton Street.

With the exception of those at the Ear Inn and down the block eating at 508 Restaurant & Bar, by 7 o’clock the surrounding streets had largely emptied out. The only real activity was the wall of cars creeping, honking, into the Holland Tunnel. Empty is how the streets would largely remain until 7 o’clock Monday morning, when the workers would begin filing back into their postindustrial warrens along Hudson and Varick Streets.

This is how vast swaths of downtown Manhattan used to look, dead in all but daylight, from Soho to Chelsea to the Financial District. Hudson Square, as developers began calling the area bounded by Houston Street, Sixth Avenue, Canal Street and the river in the 1980s, is all that is left. Or all that was.

Nothing but blue skies that I see. (gsz/Flickr)

On Monday Afternoon, the City Planning Commission certified a carefully crafted rezoning scheme furnished by Trinity Real Estate, the property management arm of the city’s oldest church, and once its largest landowner. Trinity’s holdings have been winnowed down over the years, confined largely to the plots it owns in Hudson Square.

For the past five years, Trinity has been devising a plan to turn a number of sites it controls in the area into housing, that most lucrative of New York City real estate ventures. Along the way, it has created the largest private rezoning in city history, twice the size of the massive 26-acre Hudson Yards development 40 blocks to the north, three times the size of Columbia’s new Manhattanville campus.

“Mixed-use communities, such as the Flatiron District and Union Square, which are attracting new businesses and residents, contribute significantly to the dynamic appeal and economic vitality of the city,” Jason Pizer, president of Trinity Real Estate, said in statement Monday. “The proposed rezoning would reinforce Hudson Square as a vital hub for the jobs which are so integral to the city’s future.” Trinity declined to publicly discuss the project until it goes before the local community board next month.

Will this effort really be able to transform the last untouched corner of Manhattan, to make it look, feel and behave like the rest? An earlier rezoning along Renwick Street a decade ago saw a spate of new condo projects that would portend much of the development that swept the city in the ensuing years. Philip Johnson’s last building is here, the Urban Glass House, completed after his death. His modern lofts were, until a few months ago, uniformly selling for less than the bankers and lawyers and foreigners had been paying when they first moved in a few years prior.

One of the most quietly beautiful couples in the entire city, Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany, traded Park Slope—Park Slope!—for Hudson Square. Now they are reportedly leaving, their West Street penthouse on the market for $8.5 million. Their neighbors include John Slattery, James Gandolfini and that other fabulous couple Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson. All have said they were drawn here because of the quiet of this unassuming neighborhood, so hard to find anywhere else these days.

“We’ve gotten pretty used to construction over the past decade,” Gary Lawlor, an Ear Inn bartender for twice as long, said. “That hasn’t changed anything, so I don’t think some more new buildings will, either.”

The question has become: How much say should any one entity have over an entire neighborhood?

Arguably (even inarguably) Mayor Bloomberg and his planning commissioner Amanda Burden have exercised the power to reshape the entire city during the past decade, but they were elected and appointed to the job. Carl Weisbrod has Hudson Square almost to himself.

A City Hall hand going back to the Koch administration, Mr. Weisbrod arrived at Trinity in 2005 to run the real estate division. He spent a good part of that time very astutely filling the former printing plants, but his big task was going beyond business. He was focused on the streets, not the C suites. Mr. Weisbrod, who left Trinity last year to become a partner at planning shop HR&A, certainly had the experience. He spent 20 odd years cleaning up Times Square followed by a decade in Lower Manhattan as founding director of the Downtown Alliance. Half that time was spent helping to rebuild after 9/11. Reshaping a neighborhood like Hudson Square would be nothing.

Always a school, always. Here, part of a marquee development on Canal Street. (SHoP Architects)

It is the same thing Trinity has been doing for downtown for more than three centuries. The church was established in 1697 by the grace of King William III. The third church still stands at the top of Wall Street, its 281-foot steeple, completed in 1846, was the highest point in the land until the New York World building surpassed it 54 years later. Real estate has always been at the heart of the church.

Queen Anne made Trinity what it is to this day through the generous land grant of 215 acres, much of it farmland (the annual rent was one peppercorn). Over time, much of that land was given away, granted to churches, schools and other charities, most notably Kings College, today Columbia University. What remains of the church’s holdings is concentrated in Hudson Square.

The area has largely risen and fallen with the tides of the city. After the cows and crops moved on, it became dockland when Manhattan was ringed with piers. When wheels began to replace rudders, Hudson Square became a hub of printing, starting in the 1920s, primarily for Wall Street—contracts, prospectuses, research—though everything from books to greeting cards was common. They were perhaps the very first victims of the digital age.

By the mid-1980s, half of Trinity’s 6 million square feet of industrial space in the neighborhood was bankrupt. The church rectors decided something had to be done. In 1987, Tishman Speyer, building on Trinity’s land, completed 375 Hudson Street. Saatchi & Saatchi, which took nearly half of the 900,000-square-foot building, was the anchor tenant. One by one, the old printing lofts were remade, and many stalwarts of the creative class—MTV, New York magazine, Edelman, Rafael Viñoly architects—followed. Vacancies stand at 5 percent, the lowest rate in the entire city.

It would seem Trinity should be building more office space, but the church is going in a different direction. To attract the kind of vibrant retail that will truly make their tenants’ lives (and their rents) top-notch, some lovely loft apartments would surely help the street life. Many storefronts are perennial losers, especially the restaurants.

Trinity wants to transform some five undeveloped sites it owns, along with up to a dozen it does not, into grand new apartment buildings in the style of the neighborhood’s existing industrial buildings. A number of complex zoning regulations have been proposed. These are meant to maintain the bulky historical look of the area while limiting the slender hotel towers, most notably one bearing the name Trump, that have sprouted in the neighborhood over the past decade. Still, along the avenues, buildings up to 30 stories will be allowed.

In total, the rezoning is expected to create more than 3,000 new apartments in the area, spread across those dozen sites, with the possibility of additional smaller projects. Roughly one in five apartments will be affordable, through development bonuses offered in the zoning. Special measures have been put in place to discourage the demolition of the existing loft buildings or their conversation into apartments. Basically, any office space that is eliminated must be replaced in a one-to-one basis somewhere within the district. Special approvals are also required for new hotel construction.

It is largely the same playbook the Department of City Planning has been honing throughout the Bloomberg years to encourage development, preserve neighborhood character and foster affordable housing. And yet the plan does not sit well with many in the neighborhood, precisely because it is being undertaken by Trinity and not the department itself.

Occupy Hudson Square. (Getty)

Hudson Square has been through a lot in the past few years.

Before the rezoning, there was the hullaboo about the outsized Trump Soho, where 391 “condos” were for sale in the 46-story “hotel.” Residences are illegal in construction zones, so an eventual compromise was reached to restrict owners to 120 days a year at a stretch of no more than 30 days. It was this sort of out-of-context, out-of-bounds development that helped spur on the rezoning.

Then came Mayor Bloomberg with plans for a sanitation garage. The garbage trucks have to park somewhere after all, and the mayor had rightly vowed to stop dumping them all in the outer boroughs, especially the South Bronx. Each borough would have to take its fair share. Messrs. Gandolfini, Slattery and Reed were far from O.K. with this—think of the property values!—and they hosted rallies and benefits, replete with red carpet, even commissioned a local architect to offer an alternative. Mr. Gandolfini was among the plaintiffs of a lawsuit attacking the city for the plan. It passed anyway, and steel currently rises to five stories at the corner of Spring Street and the West Side Highway. Trinity seems to have embraced the building as a mark of the neighborhood’s mixed character.

Then there was the Occupation. One of Trinity’s main reasons for developing all this real estate is to fund the church’s charitable work. In addition to fighting to end apartheid by funding Reverend Desmond Tutu and providing brown bag lunches every Wednesday on the steps of the old church, Trinity gave greatly of money and resources to Occupy Wall Street, including office space in Hudson Square. When the eviction finally came from Zuccotti Park last December, the Occupiers briefly moved into Duarte Park, the future site of that marquee tower. After vandalism and other strains of lawlessness ensued, they were evicted from the space.

Now it is Trinity’s turn to stir things up a little.

At Monday’s planning meeting, some commissioners questioned why it was a private developer, and not the city itself, that was undertaking such a monumental planning effort. “This is a private application that very much looks and smells and feels like a neighborhood rezoning,” Commissioner Anna Levin said. “I’m curious about the degree of interchange between staff and the applicant in taking this up and shaping it. Also, the extent to which other stakeholders and other property owners have been consulted.”

Edith Hsu-Chen, director of the department’s Manhattan office, responded, “Certainly this is a neighborhood rezoning, one put forward by a private applicant. As we have many applications, certainly, with this amount of coverage, there have been discussions with the department. But again, this is a private application, as we want to make clear.”

There are the usual complaints from the neighbors, of course, about schools and affordable housing. The preservationists are worried not only about the integrity of the old loft buildings but also some Federalist-style townhouses sprinkled throughout the district. But the biggest bellows actually come from a number of prominent developers who own land in the area but do not bear the cross.

“The urban design regulations are too generic, they don’t apply well to Hudson Square’s unique grid, and they don’t accommodate the type of development the plan aims to produce.” Anthony Borelli, vice president of planning and development at Edison Properties, told The Observer. His firm owns a parking lot just above the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, a fact that makes its redevelopment difficult, as half the site is unbuildable—dig down for a foundation and you hit the dead space below. But the historical covenants in place make a setback tower impossible.

“On one hand, Trinity’s plan sets a goal for creating approximately 6,000 residential units, including affordable housing, to make the area a vibrant 24-hour neighborhood,” Mr. Borelli said. “But then on the other hand, its urban design regulations make it virtually impossible to achieve that many units or to fully use the city’s inclusionary housing program.”

Gary Barnett, head of Extell Development, placed much of the blame on City Planning. “I’m not sure Trinity really cares,” he said.

And so, in 2004, the church’s board appointed the Rev. Dr. James Cooper, a Florida pastor who had overseen his previous church’s entrée into real-estate development—and from there built the third-largest Episcopal congregation in the country.

Dr. Cooper knew just what to do. In his efforts to lure Carl Weisbrod to manage Trinity’s holdings, he threw in an extra title as well.

Mr. Weisbrod, an advisor to the city’s mayors for 30 years, would become the first-ever “president” of Trinity’s real-estate division. His predecessors had been mere “executive vice presidents.”

“He’s a shy guy and wasn’t that eager about it at the start, but that was my suggestion. I thought it would be helpful for all of us,” Dr. Cooper told The Observer. “We had already begun to look at making Trinity more market-driven in its approach to commercial real estate.”

So far, Mr. Weisbrod has performed as hoped for: In the past 15 months, Trinity’s laggard occupancy rate has swelled to 93 percent, well above the neighborhood’s average. New tenants have included Real Simple magazine, WNYC Radio, the Weinstein brothers and the Guggenheim Foundation. With the help of these small but noticeable leases lending him some cachet, Mr. Weisbrod is making the former printing district into the most expensive office market south of 34th Street—more expensive even than the financial district that he once championed.

But Mr. Weisbrod, 61, says that his mission is not to make money but to build a neighborhood (and in the process to make money), which is a skill he honed while head of the Downtown Alliance business-improvement district for 10 years, and before that in Times Square.

“We are part of the church, and our mission and the church’s mission is intertwined,” he told The Observer. “I am optimistic and confident that the church’s goals and its real-estate goals are pretty much in the same place: How does this neighborhood evolve to become as good as it can be? The specific elements of it remain to be seen. Most neighborhoods are vibrant and have a variety of uses and are quite exciting places to work, visit, to shop in and to recreate in—and, indeed, to worship in, too.”

Together, the two have displayed that enviable Episcopalian knack of doing well by doing good, which is made easier if you happen to own two dozen buildings in an up-and-coming Manhattan neighborhood. Still, that is but a fraction of the 215-acre farm that Trinity received as a gift from Queen Anne in 1705. The church gave most of it away, including one chunk that was used to found Columbia University.

Trinity Real Estate brings the parish, Dr. Cooper told The Observer, about $25 million a year in income. About $3 million is spent on grants here and abroad, he said, and another $4 million goes to diocese-wide activities, with the remainder going to maintain “two very old and very expensive buildings”—St. Paul’s Chapel on Fulton Street, as well as the namesake church near Wall Street—along with music and educational programs.

Trinity has always been a savvy landlord; Mr. Weisbrod’s entrance merely opens the latest chapter. In 1983, the church rebranded the industrial district west of Sixth Avenue as “Hudson Square.” That name used to refer to a park south of Canal, while the new nomenclature referred to the area to the north. Slowly, taking a lot of flak along the way, the church refused to renew leases held by printing companies, choosing instead to renovate the buildings and turn them into higher-priced office space.

The new tenants at first were advertising firms (Saatchi & Saatchi came to Hudson Street in 1987), then Internet start-ups and back-office corporate operations—but somewhere along the way, according to real-estate brokers, Hudson Square got too ambitious.

“When the whole market went up in 1999-2000, the pricing there went up too,” said Marc Shapses, a senior managing director at Studley, a tenant-side broker. “After the economy changed in 2001-2002, it took them a couple of years to bring their pricing where it needed to be to make deals. Maybe they were holding out for the right deal, but it wasn’t priced properly. Carl has been a lot more flexible.”

The area right now looks a bit like an Edward Hopper painting: elegant but desolate. The 12-story granite prewar edifices make the neighborhood appealing to the so-called “creative industries” of graphic arts, media and publishing, while its large floor plates give it an edge over the other leading creative neighborhood, the Flatiron. Last month, Trinity hired Cushman & Wakefield to broker its flagship building, 1 Hudson Square—the first time the church has relied on outside help.

Don’t expect that “flexibility” to last.

“The reality is, when you are a landlord, you do not have a tremendous amount of information outside of your portfolio,” Cushman executive director Andrew Peretz said. “When you hire a brokerage house, you begin to know what your competition is doing and what you need to do to win business. I think Trinity has been getting in the high 20’s and low 30’s. We are asking for $45 now.”

A rent of $45 per square foot per year would put Hudson Square above downtown’s average of $42.65 for Class A and above other parts of midtown south for the second quarter. Midtown Class A rates were $57.85.

However, leasing is just part of Mr. Weisbrod’s job. Trinity Real Estate lists four potential development sites on its Web site, including a 35-story, 1.3-million-square-foot tower between Spring and Vandam streets, the rendering for which shows a vaguely International Style prism set back behind a plaza on Varick Street. He said the design predates his appointment.

“It is really premature to be discussing what we might do,” he told The Observer.

Mr. Weisbrod served as president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation under Mayor Dinkins before going to the Downtown Alliance, and he is now one of Mayor Bloomberg’s appointees to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. He once described himself as a “lifelong Democrat” (who is not Episcopalian), but has been adept at working both sides of the aisle.

“Carl is very smart and very shrewd,” said Joe Rose, who was chairman of the City Planning Commission under Mayor Giuliani. “One of the best things he is known for is being someone with brains and integrity, and the ability to navigate at both the local and state levels to accomplish things people would have thought would be very difficult.”

Real-estate insiders say his government background may well end up compensating for his lack of private-sector development experience. He also may well end up forming a partnership with an experienced developer to build on the sites, or hiring seasoned executives. One of his first moves as Trinity president was to lure Jason Pizer back from Peter Malkin’s W&M Properties in Westchester. Mr. Pizer, Trinity’s leasing director, had left Trinity for Mr. Malkin’s company just months earlier, during the dead time between the departure of Joseph Palombi, the former executive vice president of Trinity, and Mr. Weisbrod’s appointment.

But compared to Soho, the sidewalks of Hudson Square lack people, shopping and restaurants. In fact, the entire ground floor of the flagship 1 Hudson Square has been empty since Trinity renovated the building in 2001. Home Depot has been in negotiations with Trinity for a site a few blocks away, although, five months after the deal was first reported to be in the works, no announcement has been made, and Mr. Weisbrod wouldn’t comment on the negotiations.

He would say, however, that Trinity is trying to craft the right mixture of retail tenants, however.

“We want ground-floor tenants that will add to the neighborhood,” he said. “We want to choose them very carefully.”

“Oh, yeah. Let me guess. Was the Tribeca Film Institute one of them?”

“Uh, yeah. How’d you know?”

“Well, the C.E.O., Madelyn Wils is an L.M.D.C. board member, and the Institute already received $3 million back before there was any formal process for applying for funds, according to this Good Jobs New York report.”

“Well, yeah. They got another $600,000 today, for a free outdoor film series.”

“And how about the Alliance for Downtown New York ? Its chairman, William Douglass, just got appointed to the L.M.D.C. board, and its former president, Carl Weisbrod, has been on the board for a long time. The Alliance has received $4.8 million already for things like the River-to-River Festival.”

“Yes, them too, but they needed another million to do more cultural programming. They’re not going to keep that much of it, maybe nothing at all, just pass it on to other cultural institutions that are already receiving funding support from the L.M.D.C."

“Oh, I see.”

“But don’t worry. There is no conflict of interest here because there was an advisory team that vetted these 100-plus applications before they even got to the board and Wils and Weisbrod recused themselves from the vote this morning.”

“Oh, well, what was the vote?”

“Nine-zero. But, really, the Tribeca Film Institute has brought $50 million into the local economy and the Downtown Alliance has done all sorts of great things with its money, like putting in bollards and other security devices. Really, these investments are going to help everybody downtown.”

“Everyone except those who work for groups that got nothing.”

“Yeah, well, there’s about $6 million that the L.M.D.C. hasn’t given out yet. Maybe they should try for that.”

-Matthew Schuerman

In March, the New York City Bar will hold a panel discussion on the topic March 13 at the association’s headquarters, 42 W. 44th St. Entitled “Community Benefits Agreements: Who is the Community and What is the Benefit?” and sponsored by the association’s land use, planning and zoning committee, the panel will include City Council Member Melinda Katz; Joshua Sirefman, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff’s chief of staff; Carl Weisbrod, former president of the city Economic Development Corporation; and Brad Lander, executive director of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development.

It turns out that the bar association tackled C.B.A.’s once before. In a report to Mayor Ed Koch in June 1988, the bar association recommended the developers only be required to provide improvements that were included in the zoning code (such as building a subway entrance in order to get a density bonus) or that would mitigate environmental disruption that the project would cause (such as traffic).

The report concentrated on the role of government, and less on community groups striking their own deals with developers. And back then these improvements were called “amenities” and had less to do with jobs—today’s hot topic in Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards, the Gateway Mall in the Bronx, and Columbia University's expansion in Harlem—and more to do with parks or senior housing. But throughout the 44-page report (included in “The Record of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York,” Vol. 43, No. 6), the bar association committee strikes notes that resonate today. Here's a sample:

-Matthew Schuerman

There is a Chuck Schumer connection, however. Deutsch was once executive director of the Group of 35, an ad hoc committee on commercial space formed by Schumer, city transportation commissioner Weinshall's husband.

An alliance spokesman assures The Real Estate that a search committee has been working "in earnest" since the hire was announced in May. In the meantime, William Bernstein is interim chief. (Weisbrod is shown here with London mayor Ken Livingstone back in 2001.)

- Matthew Schuerman

By all external indications, the reception's been cool, even as Mr. Pataki is counting on that money to help him announce projects-and project a feeling of progress-in lower Manhattan.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation had already arranged a press conference for May 19, to present schematic designs for a massive cultural center that will include a "W.T.C. Memorial Visitor's Center, Drawing Center and International Freedom Center."

Money for these cultural projects is largely secure, or being sought through private donations. And unlike Larry Silverstein's Building 7 or the Freedom Tower, these don't depend on the free market to work.

Then there are all of the Governor's downtown transportation initiatives, like the direct rail link between the John F. Kennedy International Airport and the lower Manhattan business district, which would require the rail tunnel under the East River.

Publicly, he's optimistic about funding the project. But privately, he finds himself breaking a sweat trying to get the money from hostile fellow party members in Washington, and in the Port Authority's powerful New Jersey contingent.

"This will be the first time we have had a majority of the funds already committed before we even start a capital project of this scope," he told reporters on May 12.

The rail link wouldn't just provide a one-seat ride from lower Manhattan to J.F.K.-one that would serve, under optimal circumstances, some 4,000 to 6,000 riders a day. More importantly, its supporters say, the rail link would bring Long Islanders into lower Manhattan via commuter rail-affluent Long Islanders who work as managers and executives but don't like transferring to the subway.

It would also, one study points out, give affluent professionals who live on Wall Street a better way to get to the Hamptons in the summer.

To say that more than half the $6 billion price tag has been, or even will be, committed is a stretch. Congress is treating that $2 billion in tax credits more like $730 million; and as for the $1 billion from the Port Authority that has been touted as part of the project's funding, well, that's not a commitment.

Asked how certain it was that the Port Authority would increase its share, the Governor turned to his trusty ally, Charles Gargano, the vice chairman of the Authority.

"Charlie?" the Governor asked. "Can we count on the Port Authority?"

Mr. Gargano, standing a few feet away, nodded yes.

But Mr. Gargano is a New Yorker. The chairman of the Port Authority, and five other members of the board, are from New Jersey. They have little reason to help Long Islanders get to work in the city-although they might be willing to trade their support if they get another tunnel under the Hudson.

Counting the $560 million that the Port Authority has already slated for the job, and $400 million from the M.T.A., just a sixth of the rail link's cost has actually been committed. Yet there's little doubt that the Governor will push hard on this front. Mr. Cahill, the Governor's chief of staff and now his man in lower Manhattan, says it's the most important transportation project, and that transportation is the most important downtown concern.

"Ask the folks downtown what is the No. 1 issue, it's accessibility," Mr. Cahill told The Observer this week. "Getting trained workers not only from New Jersey but also from Long Island is extremely important to get businesses downtown. It provides a tremendous source of growth over the next several decades. Its payoff will be tremendous, both for lower Manhattan and Long Island."

The idea of a one-seat trip from Manhattan to J.F.K. has been a pipe dream for a couple of decades now, ever since New Yorkers woke up and realized that there's something that Paris and London and Tokyo and even Chicago does better than us-namely, get its residents out of town. Or its visitors into town. There is no way to impress foreign visitors more with New York's largesse than to plunk them down at the end of a line at J.F.K. that doubles back and forth a couple of times and then hand them a pamphlet letting them know that, at a minimum, it will cost $45 (plus tip) to get to their hotel.

Mayor Giuliani liked the one-seat idea a lot, although he was more partial to a one-seat ride to LaGuardia Airport. The AirTrain, a Port Authority project that replaces a transfer to a bus with an equally inconvenient and more expensive transfer to an unmanned vehicle, was the fruit of those Giuliani-era planning studies.

A few months after Sept. 11, though, with the prospect of $20 billion in federal aid coming our way, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation started talking about it again. "The idea was to make lower Manhattan more appealing than it was before," said an individual involved in the early planning efforts, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "If you could find a way to bring people to the airport, that would be an enormous advantage. By making the line the way it is now, through Jamaica, all the white-collar types on Long Island, it would be easier for them to make the commute. If you put the two together, there would be a rebirth of lower Manhattan. You could take advantage of the tragedy to make something new happen."

Other transportation projects-whether untangling the spaghetti junction known as the Fulton Street station, or elongating the South Ferry subway platform to allow riders beyond the first five cars to get off-wouldn't create any new connections, this individual said. Even the Second Avenue subway, a pipe dream dating from a time before pipes were invented, wouldn't bring any new people downtown, goes the argument; it would just permit them to exit the Lexington Avenue line with their clothes less wrinkled. People will take the Lexington Avenue line not because it's a pleasant experience, but because they have to.

Around the same time, John Zuccotti got the idea into the press when he suggested to M.T.A. chairman Peter Kalikow that he run the Long Island Railroad through the A/C subway tunnel under the East River. Mr. Zuccotti, the chairman of Brookfield Properties, at the time saw his company suffering mightily. Brookfield isn't the largest landlord downtown, but almost 80 percent of its Manhattan properties are downtown-chiefly the World Financial Center, which was suffering doubly at the time because PATH trains, as well as nearby subway stations, were closed right after the Sept. 11 attack.

The A/C idea fell out of the picture early. But a study completed last May for the LMDC recommended digging a new tunnel to bring commuter trains from somewhere in lower Manhattan to the Flatbush Avenue LIRR station in Brooklyn, and from there to Jamaica, Queens, where the trains could either go into the verdant hills of suburbia or on to J.F.K. The tunnel would shave 14 to 15 minutes off the trip for riders who otherwise would've had to transfer to the subway-although none of those riders would be from the most affluent section of the island, the North Shore-and 19 minutes off the trip to the airport. This and other options are now the subject of a $60 million environmental-impact statement undertaken by the M.T.A., for which testimony is expected to be taken as early as next month.

Another study completed about the same time by Hamilton, Rabinovitz and Alschuler is even more revealing. It finds that the rail link would create a demand for nine million to 12.5 million square feet of office space in lower Manhattan over the next 20 years-which is fortuitous, because the buildings planned for Ground Zero will represent almost as much space, and they'll need people to go inside of them.

The link will also spur development in Brooklyn, the study says, increase the value of property on Long Island by $54 million, create lots of new jobs and bring in $64 million to the city treasury in tax revenues. In other words, everybody wins.

But not everybody is equally enthusiastic about the rail link. Not only do transit advocates like Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign denounce it as a waste of money; Bruce Mosler, the chief executive of Cushman and Wakefield, who is widely believed to be taking Goldman Sachs on its current office-shopping trips, is unsure about the relative importance of the rail link, though he's much more polite about it.

"I don't know how to rate the train to the plane," Mr. Mosler said this week. "Clearly, it would be an important part of improving transportation, particularly for downtown tenants' ease of access to Long Island and the airports. So you can't say it's not crucial, but you have to get the fundamentals out of the way."

Mr. Mosler, whose company has more square feet downtown than Brookfield does, but which has much, much more in midtown, continued: "One person's opinion-mine-is that the Second Avenue subway and the link to Grand Central is more important, because that affects commutation from Connecticut and other places. It's hard to rate that over a link to the airport …. I believe the Second Avenue subway should be the priority. I may be in the minority on this, but that's O.K."

The rail link's supporters insist that the two projects are not mutually exclusive, that they're funded out of different pots of money. On the bureaucratic level, that's largely true: If the Port Authority and the federal government pick up the bill, neither the city nor the state has to worry about it. Except that a lot of New Yorkers do have to worry about it-those who pay tolls on Port Authority crossings and fees at its airports. As for the $2 billion in tax credits, well, the whole country has to pay for them, and since Congress, and the President, already said they should help lower Manhattan, what's the problem with converting them to cash? Hence the trips to Capitol Hill.

"Different people go down at different times and they speak to different people, with the staffs of various committees or the executive branch or our Congressional delegation," said Mr. Weisbrod, the president of Downtown Alliance as well as an LMDC board member. "The goal is to make sure Congress is well informed on this issue, that Congress appreciates how important this is for the recovery of lower Manhattan, and to ensure lower Manhattan remains one of the world's great business districts-and, I think, to make it clear that this is a very high priority and it has strong support."

President Bush has supported converting the tax credits and included them in his budget, but a major problem surfaced earlier this year when the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation determined that the tax credits were really worth just $727 million, which would mean the rest of the money would have to come from the general pot. Last year, the proposal passed the Senate but then got blocked by the House. The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Representative Bill Thomas, is the main hurdle to overcome.

Mr. Weisbrod contends that the chances of Congress approving the money this year are excellent, but that it's too early to count votes. Indeed, the New York delegation hasn't figured out which bill it should be attached to yet.

"Congress is more aware of the proposal and know it is part of the President's budget proposal," Mr. Weisbrod said. "They are aware it is important for New York and for the recovery from Sept. 11. And given all those factors, and that it enjoys truly bipartisan support, I think everyone would say its prospects are very good."

Mr. Durst is co-developer of a project on West 31st Street where demolition crews are clearing the way for a 58-story skyscraper that will have three separate lobbies: one for two dozen Franciscan friars, who will live and minister on the premises; another for scores of cancer patients and their caregivers, who will reside and work in their section of the building; and yet a third for hundreds of apartment renters, who will populate the tower's upper floors.

This is an unorthodox tenant roster, to be sure. But such are the realities of the city's modern real-estate landscape, where developers like Mr. Durst are turning to niche marketing consultants to help open their buildings to a more diversified group of tenants and walk-ins.

Coordinating the consultants' efforts into a cohesive bricks-and-mortar whole is a task that developers like Mr. Durst have had to approach with increasing finesse over the last few years.

"It's a challenge to make sure everybody concentrates not on their own egos, but on getting the job done," said Mr. Durst, who is working with lead developer Sidney Fetner Associates. "With three lobbies and three mechanical systems, it was very important that we get the various consultants for the various parts of the jobs working towards the common goal of solving problems and not trying to assign blame to people."

Of course, developers have always relied upon the expertise of professionals like zoning lawyers, architects and structural engineers to help guide their projects to fruition. And in some cases, they used retail, residential and commercial brokers to help market the building after it was finished. However, the last decade has seen these developers relying more and more on a new breed of marketing specialists who, beginning in the pre-planning stages, play a lead role in developing each component of a mixed-use project. This has had the effect of diversifying a pursuit that for the last century has been dominated by a handful of New York development families.

"Developers used to hang a sign on their buildings saying 'Apartment and retail space for rent,' and whoever approached the owner, that's who they made a deal with," said Faith Hope Consolo, a leading retail-development specialist.

But the business of development has become incredibly more sophisticated since then. Indeed, over the last decade, Ms. Consolo said, she has seen her business evolve from a traditional retail brokerage to a full-service pre-development consultancy firm.

"The development team that developers put together to market their property has become much more well thought-out, and the reason is that specialists like myself are able to tap the market more extensively," said Ms. Consolo, who is vice chairwoman of Garrick-Aug Worldwide, Ltd.

Indeed, the term "mixed use" has changed over the last few years. It once simply indicated that a building blended office, residential and retail uses. But the mixed-use developments of the last decade have begun to incorporate more imaginative uses, like hospitality or hotels; recreation, like gyms; entertainment, like theaters and concert halls; and now, apparently, even a religious ministry involved in health care. And as each new use crops up, so does the need for a marketing specialist.

"Real estate today is more than just a bricks-and-mortar business," said Scott Resnick, whose grandfather founded the venerable Jack Resnick and Sons Inc. development company. "Bricks and mortar are still important, but creative advertising and marketing is taken a lot more seriously by developers, ourselves included."

It's clear that this trend is not restricted to mammoth new construction ventures like the Time Warner Center at Lincoln Center, or the Bloomberg Tower on East 58th Street. Indeed, the mixed-use wave is now sweeping through one of the city's most august and iconic landmarks: the Plaza Hotel. Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva purchased the building earlier this year and indicated that he intends to convert many of the hotel's units into luxury condominiums.

And that might not be all. Jon Caplan, an executive director of the commercial real-estate services firm Cushman and Wakefield, which brokered the Plaza deal, said the new owners have not ruled out any other uses for their new property.

"It's at least going to be a mix of retail, condo and hotel," he said. "But they're exploring all possibilities right now."

And for old-guard specialists like Louise Sunshine of the Sunshine Group Ltd. and Adrienne Albert of the Marketing Directors Inc., who have been advising builders on the development and marketing of residential units for over two decades, the last few years have seen a more diversified demand for their services.

"Our role has gone from being local in nature to international," said Ms. Sunshine, chairwoman of the Sunshine Group. "We're involved in the pre-planning and subsequent sales for mixed-use developments from here to California, and we're about to expand to London."

In Mr. Durst's case, with his yet-to-be named skyscraper project on West 31st Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, the developer brought in Nancy Packes, president of Halstead Leasing Associates, to advise on the design and layout component of the project. He used Cushman and Wakefield to bring in the American Cancer Society, and Ken Lore of Swidler Berlin Shereff Friedman LLP negotiated on behalf of the Franciscans for their new home. (The friars owned the land and the five buildings that used to stand on the site.) This was in addition to separate architectural firms for the building's interior and exterior. The coordination of so many development specialists was not without its complications.

"We had a difficult time in certain portions of the job getting the exterior work to everybody's satisfaction," said Mr. Durst. "The [interior architects] had a desire to get as simple as possible of a layout, and they were being pushed by Packes, who wanted more interesting layouts, and also by the [exterior architects], who wanted the building to have more shape and exterior reliefs."

In the Mix

Daniel Rose, whose family name ranks with those of Resnick, Rudin, Macklowe, Malkin, Helmsley, Tisch and Durst in the roster of New York's traditional development elite, quoted Woodrow Wilson to explain how he now handles his projects' myriad components.

"Wilson said, 'When faced with a difficult problem, I use all the brains I have, and the best I can borrow,'" Mr. Rose said. "Development teams today want to borrow the best brains they can to integrate all of a project's features and have them relate synergistically."

Carl Weisbrod, president of the Downtown Alliance and a former head of the city's Economic Development Corporation, said the most important lesson of the last decade is that none of an individual building's components can be afterthoughts.

"You can't say, 'We're developing office space-and by the way, we'll add some retail as well,'" he said.

Retail uses, in fact, have become so crucial to a given project's operating income that the larger projects can even support specialists for different kinds of retail environments under one roof.

"There may well be four or five different kinds of markets being served," said Mr. Weisbrod, "each of which requires a separate marketing approach, and which have to be linked together in some coherent program, but nevertheless have their own distinct environment and strategy."

And not only are developments' tenant rosters and marketing consultants becoming more diversified. So too are the methods available for developers to finance their projects.

"There's no question that the real-estate industry is becoming more sophisticated as more and more money is being allocated from investors to real estate," said David Arena, the chief strategy officer for Jones Lang LaSalle. Noting the rise of public REIT's (or Real Estate Investment Trusts, which sell stock in a bundled set of properties), private REIT's and an increasing willingness on the part of commercial banks to gamble on speculative office building, Mr. Arena said that now more than ever, "New York is where the rest of the world comes to learn" about real-estate development.

Nowhere is this phenomenon of creative financing and tenant consolidation more apparent than at the Time Warner Center. Completed in late 2003, the $1.8 billion behemoth was a joint venture of five different financial-development entities and includes a basement-level Whole Foods supermarket, a high-end three-story mall, four ultra-chic restaurants, the corporate headquarters and broadcast center of CNN, a five-star Mandarin Oriental hotel, a major jazz theater complex, and about 200 units of luxury condominiums rising out of the complex's two soaring obelisks.

Stephen Ross, chairman and chief executive of the Related Companies, which was the lead developer on the project, once boasted that the retail portion of the center alone would make the Trump Tower Atrium-a relatively massive mixed-use project when it opened in 1983-"look like a postage stamp." The coordination of so many consultants and constituents required a massive coordination effort on the part of Related and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the architectural firm that designed the building.

"It was like hell," said T.J. Gottesdiener, an S.O.M. managing partner, only half-facetiously. "It was great tension. Obviously everyone believed that their piece was the most important part of the project …. Half the time, it was like pushing and pulling to get people to compromise fairly, and the other half it was like being a therapist."

Sometimes the therapy didn't work.

"Every now and then we had a stalemate, and Steve Ross had to walk in there like Solomon," said Mr. Gottesdiener. "There would be a conflict that we couldn't resolve; there was no architectural solution to make either one happy, and Steve had to stand there and say, 'This is what we're going to do.'"

Six long blocks east of the Time Warner Center stands another one of the city's most prominent recent mixed-use developments: 731 Lexington Avenue, perhaps better known as the Bloomberg building, named after the company whose new headquarters anchor the project. Located between Lexington and Third Avenues and 58th and 59th streets, the project houses 900,000 square feet of office space, two floors of retail space, and 100 condominium units in the building's 54-story main tower.

Vornado Realty Trust, headed by chairman Steve Roth, began construction on the building in 2001 and expects to finish next year. The project already has attracted the trendy clothing store H. and M. as its first retail anchor, and and celebrities like Beyoncé Knowles bought units even before the building opened for occupancy. (The intensely media-shy Mr. Roth declined to be interviewed for this story.)

A Stadium's Uses

One of the most controversial planned multi-use facilities in the city is the New York Sports and Convention Center, otherwise know as the West Side football stadium. In partnership with the city and the state, the Jets intend to build a stadium that will not only serve as the team's home but a convention center as well. In addition, the facility would house four or five high-end restaurants, a community theater, a small museum, an open-air market, and a ground-level cafe and retail space. And while some critics liken the stuffing of the facility with so many components to putting lipstick on a pig, the Jets regard the multi-use aspect of their facility as the project's strongest selling point.

The city's most ambitious mixed-use development project is undoubtedly the planned reconstruction of the World Trade Center. If built to the specifications of master-planner architect Daniel Libeskind, the complex will include five skyscrapers, underground retail, a massive transportation terminal, a memorial, and a cultural component featuring a performing-arts center and a museum.

Of course, even leaving aside the tragic circumstances that gave rise to its rebirth, this project is unlike the Time Warner or Bloomberg projects in that it is not a single building, but rather an assemblage of loosely linked structures. And, as such, it has many masters: the Port Authority, which owns the land; developer Larry Silverstein, who holds the lease from the P.A.; Mr. Libeskind; and Governor George Pataki, to name a few.

And although the state created the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for the very purpose of coordinating the various competing stakeholders at the World Trade Center, the project has suffered no small share of inter-consultant squabbles and outright battles. Mr. Libeskind famously squared off with S.O.M.'s David Childs over the Freedom Tower, the tallest building at the site; memorial architect Michael Arad is alleged to have tried to wrest total control of the project away from his taskmasters at the LMDC; and Mr. Silverstein is currently embroiled in intense negotiations with the Port Authority over the fate of the underground infrastructure and retail aspects of the plan, among other issues.

Recently, the LMDC created a subsidiary agency specifically to coordinate the actual construction of the myriad projects that are commencing simultaneously.

"We expect it to be an engine for the revitalization of the broader neighborhood," said Mr. Weisbrod, who is also a board member of the LMDC. "But ultimately the test is how these spaces are used, and whether or not they draw strength from their surroundings."

It's easy to understand why. Mr. Zarb's association, which already owns the Nasdaq, the nation's second-largest stock market, would like nothing better than to outshine the New York Stock Exchange. It recently acquired the American Stock Exchange and is negotiating to purchase the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. What better way for Mr. Zarb to make a big-league splash than by building a glamorous new headquarters on Times Square beside the likes of Condé Nast, the Walt Disney Company, and Viacom Inc.?

But Mr. Zarb's pursuit of Times Square real estate has put him at odds with a number of downtown property owners and business leaders who believe financial markets belong in lower Manhattan. And it has sparked a high-powered, behind-the-scenes debate about whether the Giuliani and Pataki administrations should subsidize the Nasdaq-American Stock Exchange's grandiose midtown ambitions, or instead use their tax incentives to encourage Mr. Zarb to build his new headquarters in the financial district.

Leading the charge on behalf of the downtown forces are William Rudin, scion of the Rudin real estate family, and Carl Weisbrod, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, a business improvement district whose board includes many important land barons and corporate heads. Together with John Zuccotti, chairman of World Financial Properties Inc., they have been quietly making the case that the Nasdaq-American Stock Exchange should build its new headquarters in lower Manhattan.

Neither Mr. Rudin nor Mr. Weisbrod would discuss their efforts. But members of the alliance's board say that the future of the financial district, which has been sorely wounded by the exodus of major investment banks from the Wall Street area, depends on protecting its concentration of trading centers. The Nasdaq itself is currently based in Washington, but it has an office downtown on Whitehall Street.

A spokesman for the Nasdaq-American Stock Exchange declined to elaborate on the exchanges' hunt for a new home, except to say exchange officials had yet to make a final decision. However, the Nasdaq-American Stock Exchange already has struck a deal to build a dazzling marketing and public relations center in the base of developer Douglas Durst's Condé Nast Building on Times Square. And it is widely known that it is negotiating with Mr. Durst to erect a new headquarters on property owned by the developer nearby at 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue.

But Mr. Zarb and his board are also talking to Mr. Zuccotti's World Financial Properties about building a headquarters downtown in Battery Park City and are considering a site on nearby West Street.

Mr. Zarb's interest in two downtown sites would seem to create an opportunity for the city to steer the two exchanges in one direction or another. Instead, the city and state have taken an agnostic position, offering Mr. Zarb the same $200 million package of financial incentives if he and his board choose the quiet of Battery Park City or the cacophony of Times Square.

'Portable Subsidy'

Naturally, the one-size-fits-all subsidy rankles some downtown defenders. Indeed, Robert Douglass, chairman of the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association Inc., a coalition of the area's major businesses, made it the centerpiece of a Nov. 5 letter of protest to Deputy Mayor Randy Levine and Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation.

Mr. Douglass lavished Mr. Gargano and Mr. Levine with praise for their recent decision to strengthen the financial district by offering a $560 million incentive package to keep the New York Stock Exchange from fleeing the Wall Street area. But he complained that the offer of a so-called "portable subsidy" to the Nasdaq-American Stock Exchange would undercut their efforts.

"I believe public policy warrants a significant differential subsidy between the two areas," wrote Mr. Douglass, an attorney at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. "The city and state should provide those benefits in a manner consistent with the established policy of strengthening lower Manhattan, and in the process New York, as the Financial Capital of the World. The net effect of the so-called 'portable' subsidy is to encourage the relocation from downtown of both Amex and the existing New York operations of Nasdaq."

Not surprisingly, such criticism doesn't exactly thrill city officials. They argue that the city could benefit from an infusion of new jobs no matter where Mr. Zarb builds his new headquarters. Therefore, they say, a portable subsidy makes perfect sense.

City officials declined to discuss the matter with The Observer . But a source close to the negotiations dismissed Mr. Rudin, Mr. Weisbrod and their allies as meddlers who were attacking the Nasdaq-American Stock Exchange deal to protect their interests downtown.

"Carl Weisbrod and Billy Rudin and the whole crew over there, John Zuccotti and everybody, they are just posturing," the source told The Observer . "But we've told all of them this is Nasdaq's decision. This isn't the New York Stock Exchange, which has been there for hundreds of years, pulling out and creating a hole. That is really up to the company. And if they prefer to go to Times Square, God bless 'em. We'll be very supportive of it. And if they don't and they want to go to Battery Park City, that's their decision."

Downtown boosters find this argument a trifle simplistic. For one thing, they say, the American Stock Exchange already is downtown-on Trinity Place. So if it is yanked out of the neighborhood and consolidated with the Nasdaq on Times Square, the financial district stands to lose a devastating number of jobs, including the market's 600 employees and the 1,500 brokers, specialists and others who prowl its trading floor.

Such an exodus could be extremely painful to lower Manhattan, which is trying to reinvent itself in a manner similar to Times Square. It wasn't long ago that Times Square was considered one of urban America's lost causes-a dying theater district overrun by porn businesses and menacing street types. Today, it is a buzzing international crossroads for media and entertainment corporations-not to mention Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Company, an exile from Wall Street.

Downtown, on the other hand, still bears the scars of the 1987 stock market crash. Longtime stalwarts like Drexel Burnham Lambert and E.F. Hutton simply vanished from the landscape. An estimated 100,000 jobs disappeared. Vacancies in many downtown buildings climbed as high as 25 percent.

Since then, Mr. Rudin, Mr. Weisbrod and others have championed an effort to keep the area's financial core from further unraveling and to redevelop many of the area's ghostly older buildings into apartment houses and offices for fledgling high-technology business. For all their successes, however, the recovery remains a work in progress. And a fragile one to boot.

That would explain the fearful cries emanating from downtown now that Mr. Zarb is shopping around Times Square. "I've been here from 30 years," Mr. Douglass said. "I've just seen it come and go and almost go in the 1990's. Any time this happens, I have to get on my horse and go to battle. I'm not sure everybody likes me making these arguments, but I have to do it."

The source close to the negotiations said, however, that the downtown advocates are missing an important point-Mr. Zarb doesn't want to be just another part of the Wall Street crowd. "I've talked to Frank Zarb a hundred times and Nasdaq's preference is clearly to go to Times Square," said the source. "The reason-and it makes sense-is that they feel if they are downtown, they will be perceived as a stepchild to the New York Stock Exchange."

As long as Mr. Zarb and his board see their salvation in Times Square and all of its high wattage, downtown may be out of luck.