By Sarah Grothjan 6/29/12 2:40pm

Faux-gress

The sphere (Getty Images)

Neither Sphere Nor There: Port Authority Wants Sculpture, Just Not Sure Where

When it comes to anything World Trade Center progress moves at a notoriously glacial pace. But the decision of what to do with Fritz Koenig’s Sphere—damaged and dented, but still intact after the WTC attacks— has been excruciatingly slow, even by World Trade Center standards.

Still, as of Thursday, a small bit of progress was made when Pat Foye, executive director of Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said he believes the sphere should be made part of the World Trade Center memorial, The Wall Street Journal reported. Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/16/12 12:30pm

The Neverending Story

Antenna or architecture?

Get to the Point: If Anyone Can Save 1 WTC’s Symbolic Spire, It Is the Dursts—They Snuck Onto the Skyline Before

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? Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/15/12 7:10pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

She's the spokesman and a rider. (Amtrak)

Rosario Dawson Rails on Moynihan Station: She’s Amtrak’s Biggest Fan Since Joe Biden

“My oldest memory of riding the train? I don’t know, that’s hard,” Rosario Dawson told The Observer last Tuesday night. “I was born in Coney Island, but grew up on the Lower East Side, so we spent a lot of time on the F-Train, going to the beach. My dad used to wear his little shorts, and the knee-high socks. He was the most handsome guy on the entire boardwalk.”

And thus the country’s most beautiful railroad buff was born.

Ms. Dawson was standing inside a post office in Midtown, there for a four-course dinner at which she was the guest of honor. She wore a form-fitting black pant suit, ruffled black shirt and black pumps that had to be nine-inches long and sharper than a railroad tie.

This was no ordinary post office, to be fair, but the Corinthian temple on Eighth Avenue known as the James Farley building, once Manhattan’s central post office, and certainly its grandest. From a staff of thousands, there is now a skeleton crew of about a hundred, which has freed up acres of space in the building for Moynihan Station. A dream since the early 1990s of the former New York senator for whom it is named, it will allow for the expansion of Penn Station across the avenue and out of the hell it has resided in for the past six decades, since Robert Moses destroyed the original Penn in 1963. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/25/12 5:01pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Terminal 3 today has seen better days.

Terminal Condition: How New York’s Airports Crashed and Burned—Can They Soar Again?

Terminal 3 at JFK International Airport is incontinent. At 52, such problems are understandable. Still, they are nonetheless embarrassing, especially for one of the main international entry points for still (arguably, hopefully) the capital of the world.

Hanging from Terminal 3’s massive flying saucer roof are two dozen diapers, the actual technical term for the no-longer white tarps, 10-by-10 or larger, affixed to the concrete ceiling by steel cables. Running out the middle of each is a clear garden hose. Why not something opaque is a mystery as baffling as the fact that this terminal, with its crumbling roof, still stands. At least a dark hose would hide the effluent passing through the cracks of time, the drippings of decades of decay and neglect, where none of it would be exposed for all the world to see.

Hello Istanbul, greetings Sao Paolo, cheerio London. Welcome to New York. Hope your 12-hour flight was O.K. Please ignore the colostomy bags hanging overhead. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/23/12 6:25pm

The Neverending Story

Slowing down? (Joe Woolhead/WTC Progress)

Shadows Return to Ground Zero: Infighting and Stalled Projects Are Back—Is the Media to Blame?

Was last year magical for the World Trade Center site, or was it merely a mirage? The Observer has heard more than once of a sort of media blackout—promises of cooperation so as not to taint the 10th anniversary of 9/11 with the same backbiting, political infighting and constituent-driven trench warfare that had reigned almost since the towers fell.

Instead, there were celebratory milestones. One World Trade Center was finally skyrocketing toward heaven, putting up nearly a floor per week. Condé Nast signed its game-changing lease for half of said tower. Governor Andrew Cuomo announced an agreement with the long-suffering Greek Orthodox Church. And of course, the 9/11 Memorial opened on time, and quite a bit further along than originally hoped. The city was triumphant.

Was that real progress, though, or simply a one-year reprieve out of respect for the dead? With the exception of last week’s news that Condé would be taking additional space at 1 WTC, the bad news has been piling up all year. Read More

By Matthew Schuerman 8/14/07 11:07pm

Easy Does It for Pat Foye

The outlook for New York’s mega-real-estate projects looked pretty bleak at the end of the Pataki administration, caught up as they were in a partisan game of chicken and devastated by inflation in the construction industry. The Moynihan train station plan had collapsed, the Javits Center expansion was running over budget and Atlantic Yards could Read More

By Staff, Staff 12:00am

Deeds and Deals

Blood on the Brokerage Floor: Corcoran Heavyweights Jump to Brown Harris Stevens

The heftiest brokerage in the city just lost three hefty senior vice presidents all at once—and a V.P., too—to rival firm Brown Harris Stevens.

“Sometimes issues come up that make it better for the brokers and the company to part ways,” Corcoran chief Read More

By Staff 3/15/07 11:51am

ESDC Makes 8 Percent in Downtown Market

The Empire State Development Corporation flipped one of the seven floors of the office condo it bought at 125 Maiden Lane for an 8 percent profit in four months, co-chairman Pat Foye said on Thursday. Under the Pataki administration, the ESDC sold its office condo at 633 Third Avenue in midtown in November and purchased Read More

By Staff, Staff 3/12/07 12:00am

Deeds and Deals

Stonewall Reopening; Will It Be ‘Disruptive’?

Get ready to rip out a parking meter or two.

“The Stonewall Inn will re-open for business on Monday, March 12,” according to a sign posted this week outside the historic tavern at 53 Christopher Street—the site of the bottle-tossing, meter-uprooting 1969 riot that birthed the gay-rights movement.

For Read More