Bloomberg's Amanda Gordon has the details: 1,000 guests feasted on 14 courses and 6 desserts, including spiced fried chicken with watermelon skewers and shaved black kale with hen-of-the-woods at the $1,250-a-plate fete, and Cohn, who accepted an award on behalf of Goldman, managed to look interested as Sarah Jessica Parker and the Ford Foundation's Darren Walker addressed attendees.

We hope that the banker, who told guests that Goldman employees had donated more than $6 million to the park, also managed to keep his feet off the table.

Also at the party: Jeff Koons pitched guests—who included activist investor Bill Ackman, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and IAC/InterActiveCorp chairman Barry Diller—on a plan to suspend a train car over the erstwhile tracks.

[Photo by Joe Corrigan/Getty Images]

The proposed LowLine (Kickstarter)

Efforts to raise money for the Delancey Underground--also known as the Low Line--have taken off, thanks to private fundraising on the website Kickstarter.com. Back in September, when we talked to the founders of the project, ex-NASA scientist James Ramsey and RAAD partner Dan Barasch, they had low expectations about raising any money from the city.

It's predecessor, the West Side High Line, had gotten some public money, but was built in a different era, Mr. Ramsey told us. "The recession hadn’t hit, and it was right after 9/11, when the city was looking to put money in an urban renewal project."

Their mission, as stated on their fundraising page:

We want to transform an abandoned trolley terminal on the Lower East Side of Manhattan into the world’s first underground park. It will be a new kind of public space, using solar technology for natural illumination, and cutting edge design to capture and highlight a very special industrial space.

In order to develop their plans for underground green space--which would require "tens of millions" of dollars-- alive, the group has started a Kickstarter.com page to raise money from private donors. The surprising part might be how well its doing. In little over 24 hours, the LowLine has already received $23,678 in pledges. By Apr 6th, the group must raise another $76,322 in donations in order to hit its $100,000 goal.

Even with $100k in their pockets, the RAAD group will still face a bevy of hurdles, financial and otherwise, before they can begin turning the old Williamsburg trolly terminal into an underground paradise. The local community board will obviously play a huge part, as C.B.3 has spent decades negotiating the above-ground space between SPURA (Seward Park Urban Renewal Area) project, and the people still living in the Lower East Side's tenement buildings.

But, as RAAD's team was quick to remind us, the High Line also received pushback from club owners and city planners, and got most of its money made in private donations.

It's taken several months to get off the ground, but at least this KickStarter campaign is a good first step to proving that there is at least some interest--and money--behind the Low Line.

Even long before Google purchased 111 Eighth Avenue, this was a popular place for hip companies to set up shop, and since some corners of the area were not rezoned residential, it can be cheaper to build boutique offices than boutique condos. That seems to be the thinking this time out.

Brokers and landlords in the area are keeping a close eye on the development. “The office market down here is relatively small when it comes to number of buildings,” said Charles R. Bendit, a co-chief executive at Taconic Investment Partners, which owns several buildings in the neighborhood. “I’m not sure what the demand is for 100,000-square-feet signature properties like this, but I would say there are a lot of cool companies that want to plant their flag down here. It will be very interesting to see how they do.”

The project is being designed by Cook + Fox Architects, and the hope is to create a LEED Platinum building, just like the firm's work for the Durst Organization at One Bryant Park.

Wasn't there enough green on the High Line already?

You can take a tour of all the district's new offices in the slideshow above, including its latest.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The company, a real estate development and acquisition firm, could shell out nearly $60 million for the site according to sources familiar with the parcel, which sits next to the popular elevated High Line park on the West Side at 511 West 21st Street.

Jay-Z (photo courtesy of Getty Images)

An 88,000-square-foot warehouse currently sits on the site but about 140,000 square feet can be built there. Because the parcel is located in a manufacturing zone, only retail, hotel or office, but not residential space, can be constructed. .

An investment group that included Shawn Carter, the rapper known as Jay-Z, purchased the site in 2007 at the height of the real estate market for over $50 million, eventually laying on millions of dollars more to buy additional air rights and develop a hotel there. Work never started on the project, however, and the group defaulted on their mortgage by 2009 when the recession hit. Eventually a deal was reached for Jay-Z to hand the property over to lender Highland Capital, a Texas-based investment fund.

Prices tanked in the neighborhood during the tough economic times and for a time 511 West 21st Street was especially hard hit because of its zoning restrictions.

Alan Miller, an executive at the sales brokerage Eastern Consolidated who arranged the property’s sale to Jay-Z but is not involved in the present transaction, said a prominent real estate investor and developer active in that neighborhood told him in 2009 that the site wasn’t worth $150 per buildable square foot—less than half what it’s trading at now.

The value has surged back, in part because of the way Manhattan’s real estate market as a whole has recovered but also due to the success of the High Line park and the surrounding neighborhood’s growing popularity as an area for new development.

“Between 10th and 11th Avenue is gold,” Mr. Miller said. “It slowed down for a couple of years but the bounceback in pricing is simply astonishing.”

Sources familiar with the deal that Highland is arranging with the Albanese Organization say it will allow the investment fund to exit the property at a profit, likely putting the purchase price somewhere just under $60 million, a figure that could not be verified by press time.

The Albanese Organization has had recent success in the West Chelsea neighborhood. The firm, led by its chief executive Christopher Albanese, bought the Chelsea Art Museum at 556 West 22nd Street earlier this year for $19.35 million. Onlookers wondered what the company would develop at the site since it came with air rights. The Albanese Organization surprised observers by leasing the 35,000 square foot property to Hewlett Packard and selling off the property’s buildable rights.

It’s not clear what type of structure the Albanese Organization will build on 511 West 21st Street, since it is zoned for office or hotel. One source said that the firm could go ahead with a hotel project or convert it into a high end art gallery, an industry that has thrived in West Chelsea. Another source said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Albanese Organization built an office property at the location. Though few developers have undertaken the construction of office space in recent years, the site is near the Meatpacking District, an area that has become increasingly popular as a destination for office tenants and that commands premium rental rates. The source estimated that in that scenario, the project’s economics would require the Albanese Organization to charge office rents at least $80 per square foot.

The Albanese Organization nor reps at Highland Capital could be reached for comment.

dgeiger@observer.com

The High Line's extension plans (Getty Images)

The High Line is one of New York's millennial architectural treasures: a testament not only to a city's rejuvenation after 9/11 and a working relationship between public and private space (and money), but an eco-friendly green space in one of the world's most industrial hubbubs.

So with the park's planned extension with Section Three, which goes northward past West 33rd St., you'd think that everybody would be happy...at least until we can get the subterranean Low Line up and running. But they're not.

In an article for DNAinfo.com, a Greenpoint resident was grumbling during a recent guided tour through Section three that the currently non-pedestrian friendly area would be best left in au natural:

It would be nice if they kept it in this natural state, maybe just put in a path here but kept it in a state of preserved decay,” said J.R. Lettenberger, 30, who was visiting from Greenpoint. “What they have further down is nice, but they could make this like an urban Appalachian Trail.”

Not going to happen, dude. If the Friends of the High Line opened up the path without making sure that the area was clear and walkway-friendly, who is going to be responsible when a tourist leans too far over one side to snap a photo of the Hudson and falls 30 feet?

It's a sweet idea, but if you really want an urban Appalachian trail, go set up a Starbucks on the top of Cheaha Mountain.

It's a good thing no one drives in Manhattan, because pretty soon there will be nowhere for repairs. (PropertyShark)

The High Line has been held up as a dynamo of economic development, generating billions of dollars in new condos, boutiques and restaurant, even attracting a museum or two to a lot where cattle carcasses once hung. It's such a big deal, there's no room for the little guys.

Alan Brownfield has run the auto body shop his grandfather founded in 1920 for decades now, but his family business was ruined in a matter of years by a few concrete benches, wildflowers and tourists, according to the Post. "I'm getting pushed out . . . [The park] has been a nightmare," he tells the tabloid.

"My grandfather started the business in 1920, horse-and-buggy time. There were no cars. He was doing the leaf springs on carriages. And now they want me out? Please."

Brownfeld said his lease ends today -- but that he's not going down without a fight. "I will pay my rent. If [the landlord] does not take it, I put it in an escrow account," Brownfeld said, adding that he pays $15,000 a month for the 50-foot-by-100-foot lot. I'm going to fight this until the judge's gavel slams down and says I have to vacate the premises."

"I want to leave with head held high, not pushed out by the city, not pushed out by the landlord, not being thrown out because of a stupid park."

Robert Hammond, one of the co-founders of Friends of the High Line tells the Post that "We enjoy the way the auto-body shop fits into the cityscape and makes the view from the High Line so interesting" but it appears the 2005 rezoning of the area makes it too enticing not to just throw up another condo.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Torque it real good. (MA Architects)

The architecture magnet that is the High Line is still attracting those big steel-and-glass gems. The Standard, the Whitney, Diane Von Furstenburg's place, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Neil Denari and his crooked HL23—all are there, and so is Morris Adjmi. He already has the XXX-rated High Line Building, and he has been hard at work wooing the Landmarks Preservation Commission with his designs for 837 Washington Street. Yesterday, the commission approved the project 8-2."I think there was a very interesting and lively discussion, and I'm very happy with the result," Mr. Adjmi told The Observer from his town car after the vote. "It was a real discussion about meaning and whether this was appropriate for the neighborhood and what something of this size would mean for this district and other districts."

Unlike many of the aforementioned buildings, Mr. Adjmi's falls into the Gansevoort Market Historic District, and he was referring to the time spent trying to convince the commission that his multi-story addition to an old meatpacking building across the street from the Standard would not overwhelm the original building. (The Observer first revealed plans for the commercial project last year.)

Back in April, he knocked two stories off the top, bringing the new structure to four stories on top of the two-story original. This time around, he "tightened up" the floor-to-floor heights, bringing them down more than a foot each, and new torqued steel columns now come down into the main building.

According to commission spokeswoman Lisi de Bourbon, the two dissenting votes came from commissioners Michael Devonshire and Elizabeth Ryan, who felt the building was still too tall. There had been concerns about precedent, since nothing quite of this scale had been built in the district, but it is not unheard of—look no further than Aby Rosen and Norman Foster's 980 Madison and the Battery Maritime Building.

Commission Vice Chair Pablo Vangochea felt there was an appreciable “interplay between the old and the new,” and like many of the commissioners, he liked that muscular industrialism of Mr. Adjmi's addition.

"There are a tremendous number of low buildings in the neighborhood, so if we are going to keep building in the meatpacking district, the typologies will have to change," Mr. Adjmi said. A simple stroll down the High Line makes that plain as day.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Take that, High Line! The pink piano designed by Isaac Mizrahi.

Who needs the High Line when you have a bright pink piano covered in glitter?

We caught up with one woman who was playing the pop-up instrument in Herald Square as part of a first-day-of-summer celebration. We asked her how East Chelsea was doing now that its western neighbor had that snazzy, somewhat snooty High Line.

"Living here is exciting," said Hiroko Tanabe, 70, gesturing at the piano. "It''s noisy, but I like it. Especially this." She lives at 29th Street and Broadway, and told us that she thinks the High Line might detract from East Chelsea's pedestrian population.

But she was the only we talked to who thought so. Everyone else gushed about how much they loved the diversity and culture of East Chelsea, thunder the High Line isn't likely to steal.

"This area is very populated. I don't think [the High Line] will take that away," said Roman Podolskyy, 20, who has lived in New York City for nine years but originally hails from the Ukraine. "There are a lot of mixed [cultures] here."

Michael Walikowski, 22, came to New York from Poland with the dream of playing piano in a Broadway show. He might be experiencing some East Chelsea culture shock, but he said he enjoys it.

"It's a cool culture, different from the culture in my country," he told The Observer. "There is a lot of diversity."

And it's easy to see why everyone would notice.

"I'm just sitting here to relax, and I'm seeing a whirlwind of so many people," said Fazal Mohamed, 54. "If I sit here for 30 minutes, I can hear 15 different languages."

So maybe that's East Chelsea's solution to all the snazzy new development west of Eighth Avenue. You can make new parks and buildings, but you can't manufacture culture.

pengel@observer.com

The museum previewed its plans for the site with the community last night, and both The Journal and Curbed were on hand. The former reveals that the museum is 70 percent of the way to raising the $680 million it needs to complete the
project. The latter had some additional details about the design and, more importantly, some blurring pics and video of a fly-through of the museum.

The biggest news is the striking, as yet unseen western facade, with its huge, Hudson-facing windows. Perhaps Piano meant them as an homage to Marcel Breur's unusual openings at the current Madison Avenue museum. We've been trying to get a copy of the rendering from the museum all day to no avail, so this grainy screen grab from a shaky video shot by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation will have to do.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

A City Council subcommittee today voted to allow the city to acquire the portion of the High Line—the former rail viaduct planned as parkland—north of 30^th Street. This is the third of three segments of the High Line, which spans from the Meatpacking District north through Chelsea to West 34^th Street. Owned for years by freight railroad company CSX Transportation, it was unclear for a while who might own the final segment, which runs through the West Side rail yards (and is supposed to be part of any development that may happen there). But earlier this year, the Bloomberg administration began the aquisiton process, which requires consent of the Council.

In the short run, this doesn't mean much will change. The segment will still be abandoned and off limits, and no designs have been done. (The second segment is still under construction, scheduled to open next spring, and there is still no long-term funding model to maintain the park.) Taking the longer view, however, the move makes it easier to build it out.