At 1133 Sixth Avenue, the Durst Organization is merging these two currents, popular public art and a sparkling new lobby, into a striking whole. The centerpiece of a new Gensler-designed lobby is an installation by light artist Leo Villareal, Volume (Durst). At 90-feet long, 12-feet high and 6-feet deep, the dazzling sculpture is Mr. Villareal's largest three-dimensional work yet. Floating near the top of the lobby, it not only enlivens the space but the avenue, as well, fully visible through the two-story windows facing out on the plaza between the International Center for Photography on one side and a bank on the other.

"I love the chance encounter," Mr. Villareal said at an opening reception for the lobby Tuesday night. "I love seeing people stopping in front of it, talking to their friends about, pointing." Even in the freezing cold of the past week, the sculpture, which morphs through organic shapes, was stopping people in their tracks.

Like many of his sculptures, Mr. Villareal created a custom computer program to control the play of lights through blocks and walls and circles and other forms, all inspired by early organic forms—it is digital art climbing out of the primordial soup. The program is set up so that the shapes and durations are random and will never repeat. "It's not on a loop, which is what I think makes it art," Mr. Villareal said.

The sculpture is comprised of 900 thin mirrored-stainless-steel blades that hang 12 feet down from the ceiling, each with 96 LEDs—86,400 in total, Mr. Villareal points out, more than he has used in any other piece. The high polish on the blades makes the piece sparkle from throughout the space, though it is truly best viewed from the street. That is where Mr. Villareal spent all weekend fine-tuning the program controlling the piece, parking his car out front as a refuge from the cold as he spent hours tweaking each strand, each form. During the opening, his laptop sat casually on the lobby's new onyx-fronted desk, whirring away with the new program.

Nearby Times Square is also an inspiration. "It's only a block away, so I wanted it to be reminiscent of the lights and the billboards, but to also be more refined and classy," Mr. Villareal said.

"It's fabulous," Douglas Durst told The Observer. "He did an incredible job and we're thrilled with it."

Mr. Villareal, who lives in the city, has seen his profile on the rise, especially in public, in the past year. His Bucky Ball was selected as the marquee piece for Madison Square Park in 2012, and a ceiling piece caps the recently opened connection between the Lexington and Sixth Avenue lines at Bleecker Street. His largest piece ever, on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, flips the switch this spring. The artist has also done similar, though less large, corporate work at the Time Warner Center and a number of properties in Washington, D.C.

Volume (Durst) is paired with the new lobby for the 1970s building built by Douglas' father Seymour Durst. The lobby was last refreshed in 1993, but very much in the style of the time, with dark terrazzo floors and almost blindingly polished travertine walls. Redoing the space is not unlike buying a new suit after a decade or two. The suit still looks nice, but the lapels are maybe a little big and outmoded, the hems a bit threadbare.

This being the Durst Organization, sustainability was important, so rather than rip everything out, the design team at Gensler hit upon a clever solution where they honed the travertine walls and put down a new epoxy on the floor, brightening and softening all the surfaces, creating a cleaner, smoother more modern look. Gaudy pendant lights were replaced with recessed lamps, and new elevator bays and cabs were added, trading dark wood for polished glass.

"We wanted to make the lobby feel like a gallery, make it feel clean and bright," Gensler designer E.J. Lee said. And it will feature art beyond Mr. Villareal's, hanging a rotating selection along the walls on the way to the elevators.

The biggest change was moving the security desk back and facing it and the wall behind it in back-lit onyx instead of wood. The security gates are now off to the side, rather than at the center near the desk, easing the flow of workers into the building. It is a benefit for the building's tenant, which is one of the biggest reasons for the new lobby.

The 1 million-square-foot tower, which is home to Bank of America, ACE Insurance and Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, among others, is about to lose its biggest tenant, the GSA, which has 300,000 square feet on floors 2 through 10, which will empty out at the end of 2014. The Durst Organization will begin marketing the space this fall and hopes the new lobby will help entice tenants into this better looking building.

"It's a whole new building," Mr. Durst said. "For the third time now, it's a completely new building."]\

It is also meant for those who may never even set foot in the building.

"Some people may look at this from the street and think, 'Oh, it's just a light thing,'" Mr. Villareal said. "But then they find themselves transfixed, it's changing, it's a seductive thing. Suddenly you're coming back, you're bringing your family back, your coworkers, and you're all staring at this lobby. I've seen it happen already."

The space, by the way, is still available for lease, for those so enticed.

Speaking of the top of the World Trade Center: last week, while the rest of us were busy hustling out of town for Thanksgiving, some pieces of the spire that will crown the city's tallest tower (for now) set sail on a barge from Valleyfield, Quebec, where they were fabricated. It's the first real look at the spire in real life, and those steel beams sort of force the question: is that really anything more than a glorified antenna?

Update: The 102nd floor is not for lease, as it is one of the upper floors that will be used for an observation deck/restaurant/vertigo-inducing tourist trap. Which is kind of good news because it means we will all be able to enjoy the space—for a price, just like at the Empire State Building or Top of the Rock. The top-most office floor is floor 93 (there are a number of mechanical floors between that and the observation extravaganza on three floors, though there are also some floors missing).

Spire showdown. (dbox/SOM, Durst Organization)

Antenna or architecture?

The fate of the World Trade Center, having been debated and arbitrated by every constituency in town, now rests with a panel of architects and engineers in Chicago. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat is the international arbiter of skyscrapers the world over. All skyscrapers are not created equal, and it is up to the Council to decide exactly how tall they all are.

The problem at 1 World Trade Center, as has been raging across front pages all week, is that the Durst Organization, the august real estate family and minority partner in the city’s newly christened tallest structure, has convinced the Port Authority to forgo a radome, a white fiberglass sheath that was to have encased the 408-foot mast atop the 1,368-foot tower. The mast takes the tower from the symbolic height of the original towers to the perhaps too symbolic height of 1,776 feet, first envisioned by Daniel Libeskind a decade ago.

The problem is that the council does not recognize antennae, flagpoles, signage or other superfluous structures as contributing to the height of the building. That is why the Willis Tower, 1,451 feet, ranks eighth tallest in the world, even though two broadcasting arrays bring its total height to 1,729 feet, the second tallest in the world behind the Burj Khalifa.

This seems absolutely backwards—why encourage "spires," useless poles with a glimmer of design intent, while forgoing actual, functional structures like antenna and signage. Whatever happened to form follows function?

"It's a practical concern," Kevin Brass, public affairs manager for the council, said. "What is to stop someone from just adding on a taller and taller antenna?"

Indeed, the council was created in 1969 to settle such disputes. They have been raging since skyscrapers were rising, when 40 Wall Street, the Chrysler Building and the Empire State all tussled for pride of place on the skyline. Indeed, the Empire State is the 10th tallest building in the world if it's 204-foot antenna is included. Staring out at the city from across either river, visually, this is the height one registers, not the 1,250 feet where the original structure tops out.

“Is it part of the design, or is it a pole on top of the building? That is the question, and we don’t know the answer to it yet,” , Mr. Brass said of 1 World Trade Center. It is a question, then, of architectural intent. And the problem is that the architect of 1 World Trade Center, David Childs, is none too happy about the decision.

“Eliminating this integral part of the building’s design and leaving an exposed antenna and equipment is unfortunate,” he said in a widely disseminated statement. “We stand ready to work with the Port on an alternate design.”

The Port, and the Dursts, are less eager to do so. A spokesman for the developer, Jordan Barowitz, said that fabrication of the spire—they insist it is a spire, an architecturally integral piece of the design, and one that was indeed designed by Mr. Childs’ firm, SOM, albeit no longer clad in its fancy suit—is already underway, imperiling any additional design tweaks.

“It’s not really at risk for us, we’re building the building, we have to build it, whether the council says so, that’s the council’s business,” a World Trade Center source said.

SOM is holding out hope that the Port might persuade the developer, who took a management stake in the building in 2010 for $100 million, to add some sort of design flourish. It has had to compromise on the base of the tower, after all, after serious fabrication issues. (It bears noting that that was seen as a diminishment, as well.) But the mast must be installed this summer to keep the building on schedule, which does not leave much time for a solution to be designed, fabricated and installed.

Port Authority chief Pat Foye does not seem eager to implement a change, either. “What was designed was impractical, unworkable and quite frankly dangerous to workers who would have to be called in to maintain it, and that’s not something we nor Durst could abide,” he told reporters after a conference on Friday.

The Dursts insist it was not the $20 million cost of the radome that killed it but the maintenance scheme, which was complex, expensive and possibly even dangerous, involving the hoisting of one-ton replacement pieces into place. SOM was given eight months to come up with a more satisfactory scheme but could not.

Still, if anyone could convince the council the tower is indeed as tall as the developers say it is, it is the Dursts. For years they were toiling away on the impressive if not especially tall One Bryant Park, standing a hail 945 feet. Atop it stood what could only be described as a white toothpick, pushing the height of the building to 1,200-feet, and supplanting the Chrysler Building as New York’s second tallest.

It was a move as brash as the one undertaken by Walter Chrysler to surpass 40 Wall Street, when he deployed a hidden 60-foot spire within the dome of the Art Deco dandy, during the original skyscraper race. No matter—it was surpassed within a year by the Empire State Building. Just as 1 World Trade Center someday will be.

Full steam ahead! (Courtesy of New York Historical Society/Columbia)

In light of the recent news that the former New York IRT Powerhouse has joined the "Seven to Save" preservation list, notable builders and community members have spoken out about the historic value of the building.

Robert A. M. Stern, the Yale architecture dean, dean of classicist architects and godhead of luxury throwback apartments noted:

By virtue of its vast interior spaces, its location, and its compelling industrial beauty, the powerhouse has the potential to serve us in many ways. Should Con Edison move on, it’s easy to imagine the building entering a new phase of life as an amenity for the entire city—a museum, a mixed-use center—who can predict?  But one thing is certain: it needs to be preserved.

The Durst Organization, those daring developers working on an unusual apartment pyramid just next door, commented:

The IRT Powerhouse is beautiful, compelling and historically significant building that deserves preservation and protection.

Local Councilwoman Gale Brewer, lady of the Upper West Side, only had the highest regards and joy to hear that the building was selected:

I am delighted that the Preservation League of New York State has chosen the Powerhouse as one of it's 2012 Seven to Save buildings.  This masterpiece of Beaux Arts design by Stanford White is a landmark by every measure; an icon of modernity and industrial history, architecturally superb, pleasing to the eye, and it stands at a prominent site on the Hudson shore.  We should no more destroy it than we would Grand Central, and we cannot afford to lose it as we Penn Station. Once preserved for adaptive use, it will become as iconic a symbol of New York as the Muss d’Orsay is of Paris and Tate Powerhouse of London. Let’s get serious about preserving the very best of our heritage, and save the powerhouse as a legacy for generations to come.

The full list of supportive quotes can be found on the Save the IRT Powerhouse blog.

mewing@observer.com

Interim art. (James Hall)

Next month, one of the most anticipated groundbreakings in the city is set to take place at the corner of 57th Street and the Hudson River. There, the Durst Organization will sink its shovels in preparation for Bjarke Ingel’s unusual apartment pyramid. Before that fanfare begins,  another triangular structure has quietly risen on the lot, only the latest project to occupy the not-quite dormant site. The giant white tent is this year’s home for nomadic SCOPE art fair.

“I was hoping if we built it, they would come, and so far, they have come,” Alexis Hubshman said. “This is easily our best year yet.”

It does not hurt that the tent is just a block north of Pier 94, where the Armory Show has camped out for the past few decades. “I would be lying if I said that the convenience of it wasn’t important,” Mr. Hubshman said.

SCOPE will not be able to pitch its tent here next year, as the lot will be an active construction site, but for both the fair and the Durst Organization, it has been a happy marriage. “I thought it was a great idea,” Douglas Durst said in an interview. “A vacant space doesn’t look good and it attracts problems. It doesn’t do anybody any good sitting empty, so if it gives a benefit to someone else, we’re happy to do it.”

The recession has left the city with hundreds if not thousands of vacant lots, stalled sites and empty storefronts. While few landlords have been willing to take the risks, a handful have thrown their support behind the pop-up shop or the temporary art installation. On a grander scale, some developers are giving up entire sites to interim uses, from the Brooklyn Flea and Smorgusburg on the nascent plot where a third Edge tower will rise to the Alexandria Center on the East Side, where Tom Colicchio has built an urban garden in the sky supplying his chefs at the Riverpark restaurant next door.

For the Dursts, this is not exactly new territory. “Whenever we have a space we can‘t do anything with, we provide it to the public where we can,” Mr. Durst said.

As far back as the 1970s, the family let an art and antiques market open on the weekends on the site that would become Manhattan Plaza, the affordable artists colony on West 43rd Street in Hells Kitchen. At the West 57th Street site, SCOPE is not the first group to arrive. The Big Apple circus recently turned the site into a sideshow of sorts, where the clowns camped out with their trailers. And before that, Mr. Durst’s daughter Anita brought her arts group Chashama in, when the old Artkraft Strauss building was still standing. She used it as studio space until the building was torn down two years ago.

It was actually Ms. Durst that Mr. Hubshman approached about hosting SCOPE there. He even tried to buy the site, which he said he had had his eye on for some years, after a decade of bouncing around the city.

“When I started my gallery, we were the first gallery in the Meatpacking District, this was 1997,” Mr. Hubshman recalled. “We were too young to immediately get into any of the art fairs. I said fuck that—excuse my French—so we decided to start our own with a bunch of other young galleries.”

SCOPE began by renting out about around 20 hotel rooms at the Gershwin near Madison Square. Then, the fair was in May, timed to all the spring auctions. In 2004, it was the first thing into the Gansevoort Hotel, even before the guests, where it took over 80 rooms. "There was art, performance, music, film, sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll and great energy," Mr. Hubshman said.

A few years later, he outgrew the hotels and moved into Damrosh Park at Lincoln Center, until their renovations forced him out. Last year he wound up at the Massive St. Johns building in Hudson Square, a little far from the action for his taste. For next year, he said he has a few option in play in the city, some in the neighborhood. "This has been our biggest year ever, so I really hope we can come back to this spot," Mr. Hubshman said.

Whether it will be another unconventional space seems unlikely. Mr. Durst thinks more developers should be doing their part to enliven the dormant parts of the city, even as they refuse. "Not enough people want to take the risks," he said.

There is one thing he will not take a risk on: the SCOPE art fair. “I drove by with my grandson the other day,” Mr. Durst said. “It looks nice from the outside, but I asked him if it was any good inside. He said no. I trust his judgment as an art critic.” He then added that his grandson will turn seven years old in two months.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The clock is ticking for Mitt Romney. (Getty)

One of New York’s biggest developers is making an unexpected contribution to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns. No, it is not Steve Ross, head of the Related Companies and an active bundler for the Republican front runner. Nor is it Donald Trump, who once ran against Mr. Romney but now endorses him.

The secret supporter of sorts is the Durst Organization, a long-time supporter of Democratic politicians no less. The contribution is a simple clock.

Last August, the Romney campaign constructed a debt clock out of two flat screen TVs over which is affixed a Styrofoam screen. OUR NATIONAL DEBT, it declares, with a stylized dollar sign beside it. A live count clicks along in yellow calculator font, below that the amount owed by each tax payer. CUT THE SPENDING is emblazoned along the bottom. The clock makes appearances at select campaign stops, including a recent one in Michigan. It is meant as a prop to help enliven Mr. Romney’s often wooden stump speeches, and Ezra Klein recently wrote that it is meant to "represent President Obama’s economic failures."

The original debt clock, across from Bryant Park after it was reactivated in 2002. (Getty)

It also looks very much like a similar clock just off Sixth Avenue, built by the towering developer Seymour Durst in 1989 to highlight the growing national debt, then at $3 trillion, or one-fifth its current amount. The clock was intended as a political statement, though it was not directed at any one politician. Durst once sent a holiday card to every member of Congress a few years before he put up the clock, informing them that their personal share of the debt was, like every other American's at the time, $35,000. It now stands at about $135,000.

The clock went dark between 2000 and 2002 as the national debt actually began to fall, but it was revived by Seymour’s son Douglas Durst, who had been tending the clock since his father passed away in 1995. A titan in the New York real estate community to rival his father, he has donated to politicians ranging from Al Franken to Kirsten Gilibrand to the New York State Democratic Committee. A registered independent, Mr. Durst gave to the Obama campaign in 2008 but has yet to donate to the reelection effort, according to the latest filings. As befitting a New York real estate big, he has also made the necessary donations to local Republican candidates as well, though not to the national party.

The debt clock in its current home on 44th Street, captured last August. (Getty)

The Durst debt clock still makes news every so often. In 2004, it had to be moved from its prominent location across from Bryant Park, where the Durst Organization was developing the new Bank of America Building. It was relocated two blocks north to another tower the family owns, at the corner of 44th Street and 6th Avenue, where it again made news in 2008. The debt was about to surpass $10 trillion, and so an extra digit had to be added.

The Dursts were unaware of the Romney campaign's own debt clock, which looks strikingly similar not only in format but also color. Then again, money is green, so it could just be a coincidence. The Romney campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

The Durst Organization is unphased by the campaign's cribbing of its iconic clock, a object arguably more enduring than any of Seymour Durst's buildings, at least on the national consciousness, if not in New York. "People borrow the clock all the time," Durst spokesman Jordan Barowitz said. "It's in the public domain at this point."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

5:45 The 116th annual REBNY banquet is just getting started at the New York Hilton. Chicago Title is having an invitation-only party on the building’s second floor.

5:46 As usual, the night’s official festivities begin with a cocktail party in the room adjacent to the Hilton’s main ballroom, where the dinner is held. Jason Muss, a principal at Muss Development, stands near the entrance to the room with Jared Kushner (owner of The Commercial Observer), Jared’s wife, Ivanka, and Fried Frank chief Jon Mechanic. “I love this party. It’s a great place to catch up with people,” Mr. Muss says.

5:50 The cocktail reception is quickly filling up. Simon Ziff, a principal at the financing company Ackman Ziff, stands near the open bar with his wife. “It’s overwhelming,” Mr. Ziff says. “Think of all the people here. A few seconds to say hi to each. That’s a lot of seconds.”

6:00  Hal Fetner, a developer who is building two prominent residential buildings with partner the Durst Organization, steps over to the bar. “The feeling in the room is always tied to the health of the market,” he says. So what’s the vibe? “Ask me later. It’s too early to tell. But I think things are good.”

6:01 John Santora, an executive at the real estate services firm who recently helped negotiate an agreement between landlords and the union that represents building employees, 32BJ, is chatting with C&W appraisal expert Brian Corcoran. “A lot of people worked on that deal,” Mr. Santora says of the negotiations. “I can’t take the credit for it.”

Steve Spinola, REBNY’s president, greets guests in the main room of the cocktail space. “We had to put a few tables upstairs,” Mr. Spinola says, indicating that attendance at the banquet has picked up from last year. “We got a lot of last-minute calls from people who wanted to come.”

6:17  Alan Weiner, the group head of Wells Fargo Multifamily Capital, one of the biggest lenders in the city, is chatting busily with Rob Speyer, one of the chief executives of the real estate firm Tishman Speyer.

Eric Deutsch, the former head of the Downtown Alliance who now is an executive at Montparnasse 56, a builder of observation decks, surveys the crowd. “My first job out of college in the early 1990s was with REBNY,” he says. “The market was terrible then and they barely had anyone at the banquet. They made me sit up front during the dinner to make it seem like people were here.”

6:30  Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney strides in. “I just secured us $300 million, a high-speed-rail grant to develop a line between Boston and New York. It’s very exciting,” she says, taking a crab leg. After she’s done with the morsel of meat, she holds the shell and looks for the waiter. “Where do I put this thing?”

6:32 The room’s cocktail banquet is about 75 percent full.

6:45 Robert Lapidus, an executive at the real estate investment company L&L Holding Company, becomes enraged when The Commercial Observer asks him if he is bidding on a leasehold interest in the Flatiron office building 114 Fifth Avenue, as is rumored. “We’re not here to talk about fucking business!” he yells, grabbing The CO’s notepad and tossing it.

Gary Green, head of the building services company Alliance, briskly and very politely retrieves the notebook while Mr. Lapidus hurls epithets at The CO. Acting like a true gentleman—and also looking the part in a finely cut tuxedo—Mr. Green apologizes for his friend. “You can’t do that! Knucklehead!” The CO overhears him say to Mr. Lapidus.

6:46  Kenneth Fisher, a partner at the real estate investment company Fisher Brothers, tells The CO that this is the first REBNY banquet he has been to in five years. “Every time this year, I’ve been playing golf in the desert [at the Bob Hope Classic].”7:00

Jeff Roseman, a retail leasing executive at Newmark Knight Frank, squeezes through the crowd. “It’s a great place to see old friends.” He greets Steve Green, the founder of the city’s biggest landlord, the REIT SL Green.

7:05 “This is my childhood,” Helena Durst, looking elegant in a flowing dress, says of the banquet. “Do you like Christmas? Do you like Sunday dinner? That’s what this is for me. I have so many memories of coming to this party.”

7:09 Deputy Mayor Robert Steel and Councilwoman Jessica Lapin walk through the room together, busy in conversation.

7:15 Guests are being pushed out of the cocktail reception into the main dining room. The dinner is about to begin.

7:16 “Do I like this party? It’s OK,” Kathryn Wylde, head of the Partnership for New York City, says. “I go to a lot of parties.”

7:25 The CO bumps into Woody Heller in the men’s room and mentions to him a rumor that Will Silverman, Mr. Heller’s colleague at Studley, doesn’t sit at a desk but stands. “It’s true,” Mr. Heller says. “He has a swivel desk that can be lifted and he stands at it rather than sits. He says it’s more comfortable.”

Does Mr. Heller do the same thing? “I pace,” Mr. Heller says.

7:40 The crowd, now dense, is heading into the main ballroom.

7:41 Bruce Mosler, a top leasing executive at Cushman & Wakefield, chats with friends outside the ballroom. “A lot of my good friends are in real estate, so this is a fun night for me, I get to see them all,” Mr. Mosler says.

7:42 Paul Pariser, a chief executive of the real estate investment company Taconic, stands nearby. Known as an avid skier, The CO asks him if he’s been to Colorado yet this season. “There’s no snow!” Mr. Pariser replies.

7:50 Howard Michaels, of the financing firm Carlton, is making his way into the ballroom. “If you’re in the real estate business and you’re not at this party, you have to have your head examined,” Mr. Michaels says. “Want to know something? I almost didn’t come. That was the pep talk I gave myself.”

8:00 Already murmurs are going around about where the after-parties are going to be. “I’m not going to an after-party,” says Bob Knakal, chairman of the brokerage firm Massey Knakal, which during the boom years threw epic REBNY parties. “I have dinner plans with my wife.”

8:05 Steve Berliner, an executive at the brokerage company Studley, flashes The CO a stack of his business cards, which he plans to hand out. “Tonight is the best recruiting night of the year,” he says. “I started getting recruited to Studley six years ago at this party.”

8:20 The CO tells Amira Yunis, a retail leasing executive at CBRE, that she looks stunning in her black dress. It’s true, the former model does. Asked what her plans for the year are, she jokingly grabs The CO by the shoulders and shakes, “Make millions and millions and millions of dollars!”

9:00 The ballroom is full. But few people are eating. In the center of the room, Mitch Arkin, an executive at C&W, is chatting. “I haven’t eaten yet,” Mr. Arkin says. “I’m not going to eat.” What is he using for fuel, a hungry CO asks. “Adrenaline.”

9:10 “After-party is at Nobu,” Matt Astrachan, an executive at Jones Lang LaSalle, tells his colleague Mitch Konsker and C&W retail executive Brad Mendelson. “JLL party at 10!” Mr. Mendelson booms.

9:15 Dessert is being served. Some kind of chocolate-coated-ball concoction. The CO is still looking for dinner, finds a steak and eats it. It’s not as rubbery as rumored, though it’s certainly overdone.

9:45  Steve Durels, SL Green leasing chief, and Paul Glickman, an agency leasing specialist at JLL, walk out chatting. The banquet is winding down.

10:00 Kent Swig, with a closely cropped beard and carrying a few extra pounds, makes his way out. “I’m having a beer,” he says.

dgeiger@observer.com

1 World Trade Center (Courtesy Getty Images)

The deal, if finalized, will be for the 42nd, 43rd, and 44th floors in the 104-story tower, a person familiar to the transaction confirmed to The Commercial Observer.

"Conde Nast had an option to expand and they told the Port Authority and the Durst Organization they were going ahead with it."

People at The Port Authority, CBRE and The Durst Organization all declined comment.

A spokeswoman for Conde Nast could not immediately comment on the deal.

Last year, Conde Nast, the publishers of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, signed a whopping $2 billion, 25-year lease at the 1,776-foot office tower.

UPDATE (5:07 p.m.):

A person familiar with the lease negotiations confirmed Conde Nast's latest proposed deal, adding that the publisher exercised an option to expand into those additional floors. The asking price for those floors is $75-per-square foot, the source said.

Once the deal is finalized, Conde Nast will have floors 20-44 in the building.

A Conde Nast spokeswoman sent in this statement to The Commercial Observer:

“We are exercising our option to take the maximum number of floors as stated in the original agreement, we are not taking additional space on top of that.”

drosen@observer.com

Robert Durst (Photo from Free Republic)

Word has gotten around that Robert Durst purchased a townhouse in Harlem, and, as happens to almost everybody, really, the neighbors are not pleased, the Post reports. The confessed murderer, former cross-dresser and son of one of New York's most powerful real estate developers, will not be welcome with open arms if he does in fact decide to move into the property he recently purchased at 218 Lennox Avenue.

Mr. Durst admitted to shooting a neighbor in the face back in 2002, mincing the body and disposing it in Galveston Bay in Texas. Shocking as the crime may be, people were even more shocked that a jury found Mr. Durst had acted in self defense. He may have convinced his peers in Texas he's innocent, but Harlem isn't buying it. The Post found the community had some pretty strong feelings about their prospective neighbor.

He shouldn’t be able to move in here,” said Patricia Lizet, 67, a nursing assistant. “He’s a killer. He should be on some island by himself. I don’t want him living next to me. You can’t trust him. “No one wants an ex-killer in the community.

Others were concerned about the safety of their children. “I won’t be out here with my son," one resident told the Post.  "It’s sad and scary. He didn’t have to chop his body up. That’s the creepy part.”

Certainly not helping Mr. Durst's case ifs the fact that his new Harlem home is located right next to a funeral home. "If I disappear, go and check him out first,’’ the owner of Owens' Funeral Home told the Post.

eknutsen@observer.com