Oh, One57! Don't just lie around moping.

Poor, lonely, luxury condo tower! Unlike the co-ops lining Central Park to the East and the West, whose residents really love them, it seems like One57's new residents are only interested in it for its money. Or, more precisely, how their money might become even more money if they buy apartments there.

As the condo's top-floor units go into contract, New Yorker's real estate community has been speculating on who the super-secretive billionaires buying there are. Tantalizingly, Extell confirmed two contracts for more than $90 million, but for months and months and months, there's been no indication of who the buyers might be. So imagine the collective glee when The Wall Street Journal revealed that one of the buyers was billionaire hedge funder William Ackman. Sort of.

Mr. Ackman, leading a group of investors, is buying the 14,000 square foot duplex on the 75th and 76th floor, not for personal use, but as an investment, much like his Pershing Square Capital Management bets on J.C. Penney. Every property is an investment, of course (words that all real estate brokers murmur in their sleep), but this one is nothing but an investment. Mr. Ackman doesn't plan to live there, according to sources. He didn't study the renderings, look at the glittering glass walls and the high-end appliances and think the happy life they would lead together. He did not, in other words, fall in love—what every home, even luxury condo towers dream of.

Nor, apparently, have many (any?) of the other suitors studying the mock-ups and One57's pinstriped under-construction exterior. Nick Candy's overtures were reportedly rejected by Gary Barnett because Mr. Candy wanted to flip his unit before the building was even completed. Michael Holtz, the owner of the SmartFlyer Travel Agency, is one of the few other buyers who have been identified, but it's unclear if Mr. Holtz plans to live there either—he never moved into the apartment he bought at 15 CPW. And then there's the Chinese couple who bought a condo for their 2-year-old—to live in when he's a college sophomore, which they optimistically assume will be at either Columbia or NYU.

Of course, high-end luxury condos are often bought as investments, infrequently visited pied-a-terres. One broker estimated that only 10 percent of Plaza residents lived there full-time and 15 CPW's $88 million penthouse may have fetched more money than any other residence in the city, but as far as anyone knows, it's still sitting empty.

Still, One57 has been having a tough time of it recently—rendered a laughingstock by Hurricane Sandy, hated by its neighbors and not even the tallest residential building in the city (an honor claimed by 432 Park). All it really has is the promise of the highest closing prices in New York City history. But money can't buy happiness, and there's no sadness like having the finest things in the world and no one to share them with.

All fixed now. (Instagram)

A new boom has successfully been hoisted onto the crane at One57, nearly seven months after the previous crane snapped during Hurricane Sandy and dangled ominously over West 57th Street for several days.

The maneuver's completion—which involved swinging the boom over three buildings before hauling it up the side of the uber-luxury tower—was announced by Extell at just after 3 p.m. this afternoon. Residents of the two co-ops under the boom will now be allowed to return home after being forced to evacuate from their homes last night. It also means that construction will be able to move forward on the condo tower.

The decision to use the swinging maneuver, requiring a second set of evacuations for the residents of Alwyn Court and the Briarcliff (the first was, of course, occasioned by the dangling crane) and possibly endangering the landmarked buildings, was a controversial one. Generally, cranes rise alongside the under-construction buildings and do not involve any swinging of equipment over other buildings.

The co-op board of Alwyn Court, which only learned of the emergency evacuation a short time before it went into effect, even sued for an injunction to stop it. However, on the day before the boom hoisting, Extell and Alwyn reached an agreement, the details of which have not been disclosed. Michael Gross, the author of 740 Park a resident of Alwyn Court, told The Observer last night that it was his understanding the agreement would involve more insurance coverage and greater compensation for displaced residents, which they would not have to submit receipts to receive.

In a statement, Extell thanked a number of agencies, slipping in, at the bottom, a shout out to One57's neighbors.

"The replacement of the boom at One57 has successfully concluded to allow for the safe completion of the building. We would like to wholeheartedly thank the all the city agencies involved in this complex operation, including Department of Buildings, Office of Emergency Management, and the Police and Fire Departments as well as Con Edison and our construction firm, Lend Lease. This team helped ensure that this implementation went as safely and swiftly as possible. We would also like to thank our neighbors for their understanding during this time. Again, our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience."

Not this again! (Getty)

Despite the rainy, windy weather that is set to hit New York tomorrow and a last-minute lawsuit filed to stop Extell from evacuating two co-op buildings adjacent to One57, plans to repair the crane broken during Hurricane Sandy are still moving forward Saturday morning.

Which means that the unfortunate residents of Alwyn Court, the landmarked building at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 58th Street, will either vacate the building voluntarily in the next few hours or face forcible eviction. The crane repair involves swinging a boom over Alwyn and two other buildings before hoisting it up the side of the unfinished tower.

The co-op board of the Alwyn reached a late-breaking settlement with Extell this morning after filing an injunction to block the emergency evacuation—an unpleasant reminder of the other emergency evacuation that ousted residents from their homes when the crane broke during Hurricane Sandy.

To see how things were going, The Observer checked in with Michael Gross, chronicler of high-end real estate, author of 740 Park and resident of Alwyn Court. Mr. Gross, who is unhappily adjusting to his unenviable, unexpected role in the city's super-luxury real estate saga, recently penned an angry op-ed in The New York Times about relative wealth and privilege in New York, questioning the Department of Building's decision to evacuate the buildings rather than force Extell to employ the slower, costlier method used at other construction sites around the city.

Mr. Gross was walking his dog in Central Park when we talked, getting ready to leave his apartment in the next few hours and check in at a nearby hotel. He said that though the details of the settlement had not been disclosed to residents at this point, his understanding was that it would involve Extell increasing its insurance coverage for the maneuver, and more compensation for residents (Extell had initially offered up to $1,500) without them having to submit receipts for all purchases.

"Frankly, I was not worried about the apartment so much as the corruption of the city and the unfairness of all this. Cranes go up and down in the city all the time and no one gets evacuated," Mr. Gross said. "Who is the city working for here? What they're doing is unsafe. The city is going to create a false emergency to save time and money. Extell has been undiplomatic, but I’m maddest at the DOB."

In response to questions about the method of repair, both Extell and the DOB told The Times that the completion of One57 was in the interest of the neighboring buildings, with an Extell spokesperson saying that "we understand, and apologize for the inconvenience caused by this disruption; however, this operation will allow for the safe completion of the building.”

Mr. Gross told us that some of his neighbors have said that they will refuse to leave Alwyn Court, even though eviction orders were posted on all floors of the building last night—including in the sub-basement where he and some of the other soon-to-be refugees store their suitcases.

And what of the comments on his Times op-ed that lambasted him for complaining about a $1,500 hotel stipend and not being reimbursed for "household necessities" from high-end retailer Gracious Home during the Sandy evacuation?

"You know what we bought from Gracious Home? We bought a travel iron for $20 because the apartment that we rented did not have one," Mr. Gross said. He added that he thought Extell should be paying residents $20,000 to leave for the weekend.

"They’re selling apartments for $90 million!" he griped. "The problem is that it’s in everyone’s interest to finish that monstrosity."

In comparison to anything other than uber-luxury condos poised to set records when they close for more than $90 million, the Carlton House is pricey indeed. Though anyone who was really hankering for the low end of the luxury market would be well-advised to stay away from Extell projects altogether—only Extell could make $65 million look, well, kind of reasonable.

So what does $65 million buy? For now, the exceedingly deep-pocketed can chose between experiencing the streetlife or the skyline—opting for either the 9,742-square foot duplex penthouse or the 10,000-square foot, five-story townhouse. Bonus points: both are new construction (the penthouse is an addition perched atop the structure that Gary Barnett bought from Helmsley for $164 million back in 2010) so there won't be any awkward accommodations or layouts. Though only the duplex penthouse has two levels of wraparound terraces and a roof deck.

For merely upper-crust buyers, there are 66 other residences with all the hallmarks of co-op living minus the pesky board—paneled entry foyers, marble-floored galleries, en-suite bathrooms and also a number of private terraces. The interiors, done by Katherine Newman design, offer buyers a choice of color palettes: there's "pearl" with bleached oak flooring, white polished marble and exotic light woods, or "mink" with ebonized oak flooring, charcoal limestone, black and white marble and "striking, rich dark cabinetry."

There's also a slew of amenities, including the ones that wealthy Manhattanites have come to expect: uniformed doormen, a fitness center, game room, bike and private storage. And there's a few ultra-fancy ones, too, such as a "dedicated lifestyle consultant to assist residents with reservations, travel and event planning" and a 65-foot heated indoor swimming pool bordered with Indiana cut limestone.

And although sales officially launched today, The Times recently reported that the building, which is slated for completion next summer, is already 40 percent sold. Perhaps Mr. Barnett—who recently told The Times that the $350 million conversion was giving him heartburn—was exaggerating a little for dramatic effect?

Extell wants to say thank you. (Getty).

Last week was a difficult week one for many businesses that call the city home. Among them Extell, whose 26,000-pound crane boom dangled perilously over West 57th Street for days on end after it was torn asunder from the crane in the hurricane's high winds.

The construction disaster is, at the moment, being chalked up to a freak accident—although an extensive investigation is underway, The New York Times reports that the crane was inspected a week before the storm and found to be in good shape—it was a blow to Extell's ego.

Breathless speculation over which billionaires were buying One57's penthouses shifted to shock, fear and resentment as the world speculated instead on the whether or not the swaying boom would fall and if it did, whether it would result in a fiery explosion when it hit the gas main below. The block was evacuated for six days. And even now that the boom has been secured, it will be some time before construction can resume on the monument to global elite that One57 has become.

Today Extell sent out a thank you to all those who worked, quaked in fear or were otherwise inconvenienced by the nearly catastrophic crane collapse. Extell's full statement is below:

We want to acknowledge the many agencies and individuals - - from the Mayor’s Office to the Office of Emergency Management, the Department of Buildings, the Department of Transportation, the New York Fire and Police Departments, Con Edison, OSHA, the Department of Environmental Protection, Lend Lease, Pinnacle Construction, Favelle Favco, JV Trucking and Rigging, Safeway/Atlantic, Stroh Engineering Services, Howard I. Shapiro & Associates, Domani Inspection Services, 20/20 Engineering and Inspections and countless others - - who worked tirelessly together during the past week under the most challenging conditions to secure the hurricane-damaged crane atop One57 and keep our community safe. We are grateful that 57th street and the surrounding areas are reopened and all of our neighbors were able to return safely. Thank you for your extraordinary efforts.

kvelsey@observer.com

Views of the Hudson River don't command as much as views of Central Park, but they're certainly as lovely.

It seems like all we hear about these days is how popular and cool One57 is. There's hardly spotlight left for other superstar buildings like the Ritz Carlton and the Plaza, let alone Extell's former luxury darling The Aldyn. After all, the Aldyn might be a super luxurious and amenity laden, with an indoor basketball court, but it's not where the billionaires seem to be flocking to.

We're glad to see that some buyers, at least, are still looking at the attention-starved glass  condo/rental tower at 60 Riverside Boulevard. City records show that a mysterious buyer with limited imagination, 60 Riverside LLC has paid $13.7 million for  unit 1601, a six-bedroom duplex.

Who knows, maybe that anonymity points to a billionaire, or better yet, a celebrity. From A-Rod to Bruce Willis to Robin Williams, Riverside South has attracted plenty of them.

Time to sell the priciest sponsor units.

The sponsor unit sets a sales record for the building, although the developers were angling for $14.9 million when they listed the unit this July. It's the same price they were asking when the unit made its market debut in June 2011, only to have its listing yanked at the end of that month. Another unit on the 21st floor is currently asking $15.9 million, but it has yet to sell.

The apartment, listed with the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing group, clocks in at just over 6,700-square feet. Which is, we hear, around the same size as the $95 million listing at 15 Central Park West and the $95 million listing at the Ritz Carlton—talk about a steal, with better river views, no less. And certainly, these buyers will get a lot of bang for their buck with six bedrooms, 8.5 baths (the master is teak wrapped and features a Zuma deep soaking tub), terraces and double height ceilings.

Besides, Aldyn buyers might not be able to stroll out the door and into Central Park, but why would they need to? They can just head downstairs to the pool, squash court, rock climbing wall, yoga studio or bowling alley. Not to mention Pier 72 and the rest of Hudson River Park just down the hill.

kvelsey@observer.com

It's stunning, of course, but is it stunning enough?

You might think that life would be impossibly pleasant for the set wealthy enough to buy magisterial spreads on the top fifteen floors of One57. But The New York Times reports that a potential storm is brewing on the building's uppermost floors. Extell is deeply concerned that members of the "billionaire's club"  will clash with each other as they undertake massive renovations to the yet-to-be finished spaces.

Which makes us wonder, can you even call such undertakings renovations when the building won't be ready for move-ins until 2013? Alas, regardless of what you call them, the super rich do like to give their trophies a super special, personalized shine.

Apparently, there have been no dust-ups of yet between the residents who won't live there for another few years (if they even live there at all!) but Extell president Gary Barnett is worried that his buyers with the biggest bank accounts—who by and large want to bring their own designers and architects in to customize the floor-throughs they're buying—may cause all kinds of headaches, making the top floors an ongoing construction zone.

“We don’t want our people who are buying and accepting our finishes to be sitting there for three or four years while tons of construction goes on in the building and people build out their spaces. It ties up elevators and creates dust and noise," Mr. Barnett tells The Times.

Indeed, while it can be charming to have neighbors as filthy rich as oneself, putting so many outsized egos in such close proximity can cause problems. And, while buyers of the building's fanciest pads certainly don't limit themselves to one residence, there's more than a passing possibility that some of the world's wealthiest will be angry about neighbors who take as many liberties with the building as they do. After all, co-ops do have summer work hours for a reason.

To try to head the headaches off, Mr. Barnett is now trying to sign contract with the provision that Extell do most of the heavy construction work as it's finishing the building.

At least not all buyers are set on customizing the space—some are more focused on the flip. One of the top-floor buyers is Michael Hotlz, the multi-millionaire who owns the SmartFlyer travel agency and once owned an apartment in 15 Central Park West where he never lived and quickly flipped for almost twice the price. Although he did admit that he was quite taken by One57's charms.

“This is going to be a hard one not to live in,” Mr. Holtz told The Times. “Maybe I will stay, maybe I won’t, maybe I’ll rent it. It really depends on what mood I’m in.”

Well, thank goodness that merely rich residents of the lower floors are expected to keep the building finishes done by Danish designer Thomas Juul-Hansen.

kvelsey@observer.com

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.

The entrance to the new tower. (DNAinfo)

The Christian de Portzamparc project is at the northwest corner of the site. (DNAinfo)

We already know that the DMZ between the Upper West Side and Hell's Kitchen (call it Lower West End Avenue?) is a happening spot, with the Walentases, the Dursts, the Elghanyans, basically everybody building a slick new project over there. The biggest, of course, is Riverside Center, Gary Barnett's massive reimagining of the final plots of the Riverside South complex.

Earlier this week, Extell returned to the local community board with plans for affordable housing in the project, according to DNAinfo, and therein he revealed the latest detailed designs for the Christian de Portzamparc-created project.

Construction at Riverside Center is expected to start on the first tower, known as Building 2, at the corner of Riverside Drive and West 61st Street, in November, pending city approval.

This particular project is Building 2 in this diagram. (DNAinfo)

Twenty percent of the building's 616 units are slated to be affordable, ranging between $529 for a studio and $1,009 for a three-bedroom apartment. Qualifying families must earn between 40 and 50 percent of the annual median income in the city, which is between $23,000 and $43,000, depending on household size.

The board generally looked favorably on the project, though, naturally, there were calls for even more affordable housing.

Update: The project is actually being developed by the Dermot Company and designed by SLCE, not Mr. Barnett and Mr. de Portzamparc. The parcel for building 2 has been sold off to the former firm following a public approval process involving the latter—where the public quite liked the work of Mr. de Portzamparc. Now that he has been switched out, it will be curious to see what people think.

Nobody knows who'll live here and it's driving us all crazy. (Extell)

Remember when sales started at 15 Central Park West? And how the buyers were "supposed to be kept secret," but everyone was too excited to keep quiet and they gossiped like crazy and all the buyers turned out to be really famous, exciting celebrities like Denzel Washington and Sting? Wasn't that great? We were almost like best friends, us and 15 CPW, whispering late into the night together, swapping secrets.

One57, on the other-hand, is mysterious and distant and never tells us anything, huffs The New York Times in article about how different One57's approach to publicity is from the good natured and totally cool about everything 15 CPW.

In 15 CPW's case, the leaks turned out to be a brilliant marketing strategy, The Times claims (take a hint Extell). The Times speaks with Michael Gross, who is penning a book about 15 CPW and confirms their  suspicions about the awesomeness of 15 CPW's approach.

“There was a constant drip, drip, drip of information that made 15 seem like the most fascinating building in New York,” Mr. Gross said.

One57, on the other hands, is so weirdly reticent about divulging details that people, out of sheer boredom and frustration, have been forced to make up stories about the Qatari prime minister buying a $25o million block of apartments in the building.

Gary Barnett, can't you see what you and Extell are doing to us? Even after speaking out to say that the Qatari Prime Minister had definitely not bought anything in the building, you continued to torture us with riddles. Yes, the $90 penthouse was in contract and yes, the penthouse most recently listed for $115 million was also in contract, but the buyers were not from Asia or the Middle East.

“Neither is on the right continent,” Mr. Barnett told The Wall Street Journal when he shot down the Qatar rumor, “So they have another five guesses to go.”

Six months and 50 percent into sales and only one buyer—Richard Kringstein, the co-owner of outerwear company Herman Kay Company—has been disclosed, The Times marvels in mock-fascination before going a little mean girl on One57. Is it because there's actually something to hide?

Sure, sure, maybe it's a different market now than when 15 CPW went up, or maybe people don't like to brag about their really big purchases as much as they once did (although the most recent moves of the luxury market could hardly be called discreet), but maybe it's the fact that Mr. Barnett doesn't want anyone to know how many foreigners are buying into the tower.

"Some brokers murmur around town that Mr. Barnett may be trying to avoid revealing the number of foreign buyers at the building, because that might scare off other potential domestic buyers," The Times writes. Not that The Times believes that, but they just thought you should know what people are saying about you, One57.

And the one outed One57 buyer? He doesn't even care that people know he bought there, in fact, he told his friends and family that he was moving there with his wife. And why not? Confidentiality  “is not such a big deal,” he tells The Times.

Are you listening Mr. Barnett?

kvelsey@observer.com