His hoopiness (Getty)

So Barclays's Bruce Ratner told Charles Bagli today. "We've kept every single promise we've ever made," he insists. So be it.  In typical fashion, the Times scribe cut the Brooklyn developer down to size without so much as uttering a nasty word against him, as he has done to so many big builders and outsized egos over the years.

We could count the ways in which Mr. Ratner has broken his promises over the years, on jobs, housing, subsidies, timetables, architects ... the list goes on and on, but we'll leave that up to Norman Oder. After all, Mr. Ratner qualifies his promises in the conditional, adding, "We’ve built the arena. They said we’d never build it. And I’m going to build the affordable housing." Fair enough.

Better still, let's let Mr. Bagli himself count the ways in which Mr. Ratner has snookered the city over the years. His writing is as understated as Mr. Ratner's work is bombastic. While the story contains almost no news, it so beautifully and articulately chronicles what transpired at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, it is a wonder the project was actually realized. And yet it also makes clear there was absolutely no other outcome possible. This is Bruce Ratner, after all.

To wit, one small revelation that encapsulates much of the story comes to light:

His willingness to change plans —abandoning an expensive Frank Gehry design and building a smaller railyard—solidified his reputation for promising anything to get a deal, only to renegotiate relentlessly for more favorable terms. In separate encounters in meetings over the Atlantic Yards project, Mr. Ratner loudly berated Rafael E. Cestero, then the housing commissioner, and Seth W. Pinsky, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, after not getting his way.

These are ostensibly two of Mr. Ratner's allies on the project, and two of the toughest guys in city government. And there he stood. No wonder he is still standing after "the most difficult, bruising development project I’ve done, or could even imagine doing," as Mr. Ratner puts it to Mr. Bagli.

Don't play games with the skyline. (Related)

Big. Really big. As usual, the erudite Charles Bagli puts it into perspective in all of one sentence:

Still, city officials predict that within two decades, Hudson Yards could have more office space than Baltimore or Portland, Ore., and as many apartments as Stamford, Conn.

It's a city in a few city blocks.

The Times sat down with Mayor Michael Bloomberg as well, for a look back at the Olympics that weren't, and how New York may have won anyway.

Even Mr. Bloomberg, who allowed that he “hates to lose,” said that in retrospect, the failure of the Olympic bid may have been a blessing for the city.

“Given what happened to the economy, it would’ve been tough to raise all the money,” Mr. Bloomberg said in an interview.

But, he added, his administration pushed ahead with many of the projects and land-use changes that were contained in the Olympic proposal, not just on the Far West Side, but in other parts of the city as well.

“We thought the Olympics would be the catalyst to get a lot of things that many people thought the city needed,” he said. “In fact, many got done” anyway.

From five rings to three on the Far West Side.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Pipe dreams. (Port Authority)

Well, our jobs just got a lot harder.

The Times's Charles Bagli, dean of the development beat, filed his second story today since mid-June, when he went on book leave—he is working on a tome about the rise, fall and rise of Stuyvesant Town. The last article he wrote was about 9/11, a date almost every reporter in the city was compelled to weigh in on, but otherwise nothing.

Today, he files a typical read-em-and-weap bombshell about the death of Vornado's decades-long Port Authority Terminal tower. The Observer reached out to Mr. Bagli and he indeed confirmed that this was not simply a scoop too good to sit on but that he was indeed very much back on the job. And so being beaten to the punch shall resume.

But last week, the developer, Vornado Realty Trust, told the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that it had lost its Chinese investor and could not proceed with the 40-story tower over the north wing of the bus terminal, at the corner of 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue.

As a result, the on-again, off-again project may finally be dead. [snip]

Vornado was not prepared to proceed by itself. The real estate market has regained some momentum since the recession, but lenders remain skittish.

“Vornado informed the Port Authority of this recent development,” Patrick J. Foye, the authority’s executive director, said on Monday. “I expect to sit down with Vornado shortly.”

King Kong Bagli has felled another building.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Ever since the media giant signaled its intent to move into the building a few months ago, we've considered the deal more or less a foregone conclusion. But The Times' inimitable Charles Bagli reveals otherwise. In addition to negotiations over cost, Condé also needed to ensure, according to Mr. Bagli, that its "black cars (more than 100), its racks of designer dresses and its well-shod executives" would be unmolested by the phalanx of security that is to surround the building. 

The lease will go before the Port Authority Board for final approval May 26, but, according to the terms, Condé will occupy floors 20 through 41 with a rent in the low $60s per square foot (likely subsidies might bring it even lower, and the tenant also gets to consolidate its six offices into one). Not a bad deal for a media tenant with a bottom line as pinched as Anna Wintour's face.

It's arguably an even better deal for downtown, which has started to lure high-profile new tenants, such as WilmerHale and potentially Sirius radio. "Conde Nast moved from Madison Avenue in the '90s, when Times Square was a no man's land," Douglas Durst, whose late father, Seymour, had a decisive hand in Times Square's renaissance, reminded us recently. 

lkusisto@observer.com 

One story has carried dozens of his bylines over the past few years, that of the sale and subsequent collapse of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. Now, his name will grace the cover of a book about the massive middle-class housing complex on the East River.

According to Publishers Marketplace, the book was picked up yesterday by Dutton, a Penguin imprint, for an undisclosed sum.

"You've got this wonderful tale of the people who lived there, and then you've got 'greatest real estate deal of all time,'" Bagli told The Observer over lunch in the Times' airy cafeteria last week.  That deal would be Tishman Speyer's $6.3 billion purchase of the 11,000-unit, 80-acre spread that MetLife built in the 1940s and then sold at the height of the real estate boom. Orchestrated by Rob Speyer, with the help of BlackRock, the Church of England, the government of Singapore and a handful of public pension funds, the takeover soured along with the real estate bubble. "It's just a phenomental story, it has everything," Bagli said.

Bagli said he would focus primarily on the most recent goings-on at Stuyvesant Town: MetLife's decision to sell, Tishman Speyer's winning bid and its aggressive deregulation of the complex, the court case challenging the new rents, the developer's forfeiture of the property, Bill Ackman's dramatic grab this summer and whatever else might happen before Bagli turns in his manuscript next summer.

The book will also be leavened with the complex's dramatic history, beginning with the seizure of the Gas House District and the relocation of the 3,100 families who lived there. There is also what Bagli called "Stuy Town's original sin," the early refusal by MetLife to allow minorities into the complex. Bagli said were it not for an eventual settlement, the MetLife case, and not Brown v. Board of Education, would likely be the famous de-segregation case discussed to this day.

The mix of tumultuous takeover and complex history has the makings of another Barbarians at the Gate. "If it could be anything like that, even a little bit like that, I'd be proud," Bagli said. "I don't know if it was the first business book I read, but it was the first one I enjoyed."

Bagli will continue to work his regular beat for the paper as he reports and writes the book. It has even turned up a few stories, such as a piece on Lee Lorch, a doctor who fought to integrate the complex and was eventually driven out of the country for it.

"At one time or another, everyone I know lived in or knows someone who lived in Stuy Town, including my agent and the publisher, even my wife's uncle," Bagli said. The book found him as much as he found it, he said.

Correction: A previous version of this article mistated the number of apartments as 23,000. That is roughly the number of people living in the complex.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Full release is after the jump.

The Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation

Presents a discussion:

The Javits Center Expansion:
Will it become a world class facility?

Featuring
Kent Barwick
President, Municipal Art Society

Henry Wollman
Director, Steven L. Newman Institute Baruch College (CUNY)

David Weprin
Chair, Finance Committee New York City Council

Moderator

Charles Bagli
New York Times

Will the proposed Javits expansion now become competitive with its larger competitors? Is it designed in the most efficient and affordable way? How will it be able to avoid the fate of most convention centers which do not live up to expectations and become financial disappointments? Will the largest conventions now consider coming to New York despite our costs being higher than most other cities?

Tuesday, May 9th, 2006
6:30 P.M. Prompt
(Free and open to the public - Reception to follow)
***PLEASE NOTE THIS IS NOT AT THE CUNY GRADUATE CENTER***:

The Community Church of New York
40 East 35th Street
(Between Park and Madison Avenue)
NO RSVP NECESSARY

-Matthew Schuerman

Why such hyperkinetics on the part of the Port Authority? Charles Bagli reports that at least two commissioners were not enthusiastic about the deal on the table Tuesday, but that Governor Pataki was. Maybe now that the Port Authority upset the whole apple cart, these commissioners will push for a fresh new deal that could further diminish Silverstein’s role at Ground Zero. All of which is to say that before Silverstein and the Port Authority agree, the Port Authority and Pataki have to make a deal.

-Matthew Schuerman