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.

The statement came as a relief to Sphere supporter Michael Burke, who lost a brother in the attacks and has been a staunch advocate of the sculpture’s relocation to the 9/11 memorial site ever since.

“They say the sphere is reminding us directly of the attacks,” Mr. Burke told The Journal. “That kind of ignores the sphere’s existence. It’s absurd. Barring it from the site is a betrayal.”

"The point that Mr. Burke made resonates with many people in New York and New Jersey and many people here at the Port Authority, especially given the fact that 84 members of the Port Authority family were killed on 9/11," Mr. Foye said. "This is an artifact that survived and was affected by the horrors of 9/11, and placing it on the memorial plaza, we think, is entirely appropriate."

And while it's good to see some headway being made after back-and-forth debates (which were supposed to be settled back in May), especially give the impending homelessness of the statue, which has been camped out in Battery Park for the past decade but needs to be moved for park renovations, Mr. Foye's vague statement of support doesn't give many details about where exactly the 25-foot-tall, 45,000-pound sculpture will go.

Mr. Foye said that he hopes “the ultimate result will be one that is an appropriate site for the sphere and one that’s respectful of the views Mr. Burke spoke of at our meeting today.”

sgrothjan@observer.com

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.

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

A smile bigger than Thomas the Tank Engine's.

“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.

Amtrak and the Port Authority had assembled big wigs from both sides of the Hudson, and as far as Albany, Trenton and Washington, for a dinner to celebrate the awarding of a contract for the first phase of the station, to be ratified by a state agency the following morning. Construction is set to begin on the $267 million project this summer, work that will take four years to complete because the tracks below ground will be still for weekend nights only, and even then only 32 weeks out of the year.

Even then, the best the city will be left with is longer platforms, a new concourse and two entrances on the west of Eight Avenue. When the rest of the billion-dollar station, creating a grand new train hall inside the old post office, will commence is anyone’s guess. It was supposed to have begun at least twice by now.

“After 20 years of presentations, releases and announcements, we are finally moving forward with this important project, and I think we will all remember where we were when this happened,” Pat Foye, executive director of the Port Authority, told the assembled graybeards as they dug into their second course, crab cakes, available on Amtrak’s California Zephyr line, between Chicago and San Francisco.

It is a sad, even pathetic fate passenger rail suffers in America. It is said to be a pet project of President Obama, but wherever he sets out to fund a new tunnel or high-speed rail line, another Republican governor (Christie, Walker, Scott) kills it. The few dozen men and women assembled inside the Farley’s cavernous old sorting room, with its soaring skylight and massive steel trusses, maybe someday destined to be the new train hall, hope to stop them.

And so does Rosario Dawson.  She may be the Official Spokesman for National Train Day, but she is also the most earnest train advocate The Observer has ever met who does not have a Lionel set in the basement (we asked). She went on a five-minute breathless tirade enthusing on rail travel during the main course, short ribs and pureed potatoes. She even starred in Unstoppable, a 2010 runaway-train film. This is no Campbell Soup campaign, this is National Hair Club—Rosario Dawson is not only a spokesman, but a rider, too.

“I love riding trains, I do it whenever I can,” she said. “In New York, I still ride the subway, sometimes. It’s so liberating not to be stuck in traffic. And I love taking Amtrak. You don’t have to deal with the hassle of security, and you can actually see the scenery, get up and move, the food is better, and the bathrooms are bigger than a closet. I just took it back from the White House Correspondents Dinner, and it’s so much fun to see everyone there on the train.”

The train is one of the biggest things Ms. Dawson misses since leaving New York. “That’s what I hate about L.A., the constant traffic. I really wish there were more trains.” (Actually there will be soon, thanks to a new sales tax funding $40 billion in mass transit over the next 30 years. That would fund two Second Avenue Subways or 15 7-Train extensions.)

Still, like many in the room last week, she was embarrassed by the state of American mass transit. “In London, where I live part time, I’m, across from King’s Cross Station,” Ms. Dawson explained. “I love watching the people come and go, to be able to get to Paris in a few hours. I had a friend headed up to Leicester, she invited me to dinner, I said, ‘Why not,’ hopped a train, was on the other side of England and still got back in time for a 6 a.m. shoot the next morning.”

“I really hope this new station can help bring people back to train travel, it’s so romantic and luxurious,” Ms. Dawson said. With her on board, how could it not?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Bright skies: The Pan Am Terminal a year after opening, 1961. (Wikimedia Commons)

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.

At least it was still freezing outside on Sunday afternoon after I had flown up from Philadelphia. (A rare luxury, if that, but how else to get unescorted into the terminal in this age of security? It was not for expediency’s sake for sure, for New Jersey Transit is still the better route between Bucks County and Brooklyn.) Had the temperature risen above 32 degrees as predicted, the snowmelt from the previous day’s three-inches would already be leaking its way through the terminal, dripping down here and there, a little precipitation for our new guests. A little New York surprise.

This is our 21^st Century Statue of Liberty.

The downside to the freezing cold is that for those of us not flying in from abroad, those aboard the puddle jumpers, the Bombadiers and Embraers that most carriers would have thought embarrassing even a decade ago but that now offer an unbeatable deal on fuel economy, the problem for us is that the peculiar constraints of JFK’s current configuration mean that we must disembark on the tarmac. Instead of a homely concourse, we are greeted by a maze of beige plastic. The ground is slick in places with ice. A woman coming as we are going is overheard telling her companion “This is really so inefficient, I’ll tell ya.” Had we boarded the wrong flight and wound up in Ketchikan?

Inside the Worst Terminal in the World >>

And then, just when we finally find our way out of the maze, nose runny, hands frostbitten, the snow melting off a pipe running through the walkway starts dripping on us. Maybe they need some diapers out here, too.

“For New Yorkers I think its O.K.,” a Delta employee on our flight up from Philadelphia said when asked before departure about the Delta terminals. “For other people, I think its confusing.” When you deal with the subway everyday, you come to expect these kind of conditions. At least there are no rats.

Except for the flying kind. Mesh hangs above the entrance and pigeon spikes crown every surface because not only pigeons but also sparrows actually live in the terminal, and seem to get along better than any of the humans. On at least one occasion, two sparrows were wrestling, and one buzzed a young woman, nearly knocking her over. Who knows how much luggage has been shit on.

There is the sickly fluorescent lighting, like something out of a horror movie basement. Low ceilings everywhere, even inside the flying saucer, which once soared, until the upper deck was built to accommodate that ever-so-necessary Burger King and Stone Rose Grill, with the $16 flank-steak pizzabread. Gourmet New York cuisine at its finest.

Extending from the Kennedy-era saucer is the Never-ending Concourse, bad enough until the T.S.A. showed up a decade ago. Their screening gates mean you can no longer walk in a complete circuit around the diamond-shape promenade and mini mall (Brookstone, Virgin, Yoursmomsfavorite Coutoure, three different Duty Frees) built in 1971 to accommodate the new larger jets that had already rendered the original Terminal 3 obsolete. Now, you must double back on your search for non-Starbucks coffee, praying to make it back to the gate in time for take off.

Traveling through JFK Terminal 3 is like flying through a third world country.

Actually, it is worse. Last week, Frommer’s ranked the world’s 10 worst airport terminals, and this one received bottom honors, below Nairobi, Moscow and even Manilla’s Terminal 1, where a section of the roof actually collapsed last year and injured two people. Newark Terminal A was ranked eighth worst, LaGuardia Terminal C one spot below that.

How is it, though, that New York, home to Ellis Island and 50 million tourists, world capital of everything, wound up with not just one but three of the worst airports in the world? How is it that we have landed in aerial ignominy?

Terminal 3 today has seen better days. (Matt Chaban)

It should come as good news, then, that within the next two years, JFK Terminal 3 will be gone. If only that were not such horrible news.

“It’s such a great idea, and so unique,” said John Morris Dixon, editor of the highly influential midcentury magazine Progressive Architecture, upon hearing Delta’s announced plans a year and a half ago. He wrote lovingly of the terminal’s opening, all of the Jet Age terminal‘s openings, half a century ago. “I don’t know if there’s another circular terminal like itt66.”

Walking through Terminal 3, the only thing more omnipresent than the dreariness is the posters, banners, infographics, videos, brochures, signs and the sides of shuttle buses all trumpeting a bright future just a hundred yards away. THE NEW DELTA T4 TERMINAL Coming May 2013 they cheer in bold Helvetica. Next to these are renderings of the new, expanded terminal, with more curbside check-in space, more security points, new restaurants and lounges, extra airport gates.

The message is clear. This terminal you are now in, it is not real. It is a nightmare, but one from which you will wake in 16 months.

"New York is by far the most competitive market in the world," said Gail Grimmet, Delta's senior vice president in charge of New York. "There is $14 billion in revenue at stake and we're all competing for it. Last summer, there were 80 carriers flying out of JFK, so you're up against a lot of competition." An inferior, geriatric facility just will not cut it anymore.

What this means for Terminal 3 is total annihilation. It will not be replaced by another shiny aviation bauble. It will simply become extra taxi space and a new apron, the term for airplane parking. This is actually a good thing for fliers, since it will mean more room for planes to maneuver at the airport and faster turnarounds at the gate. One of the nation’s slowest airport might just speed up a bit.

But to do so will be at the cost of the last operational piece of Jet Age architecture at an airport that once defined it for the entire world. “Land is so critical at JFK, you really have to evaluate it and makes sure you’re getting the best use out of it,” Delta's Ms. Grimmett said. Terminal 3 "really is an interesting building, but structurally, it’s outlived its usefulness.”

There is Eero Saarinen’s world-renowned TWA Terminal, of course, the one building the Port Authority deigned to preserve. But even then, the old Terminal 5 is hemmed in by JetBlue’s new and very nice T5--voted one of the top 10 by Frommer’s, it turns out. Probably the finest piece of aviation architecture ever built, the old alien beauty awaits some future use, perhaps a hotel wedged between terminals new and old. A request for proposals went out last year, with Donald Trump, Yotel and Andre Balazs among those interested. The Standard Queens sounds appealing, but who would really take the hour A-Train trip out to Jamaica for a party?

Well, they used to, actually, a few years ago, when the terminal had a short-lived stint as a cultural and event space, but at the terminal’s second ever party someone left the door to the tarmac open and a few drunk revelers found themselves out on the jet way. There was no incident, but the TSA was none too pleased. JetBlue, which is still responsible for the original terminal, decided it was simply better to forego parties than to take on the risk that came with them.

This is much the reason JetBlue tore down Terminal 6, I.M. Pei’s old Sundrome, the beautiful home of the long-gone National Airlines. Like all of the old JFK terminals, it was a statement piece, home to the world’s first freestanding glass curtain wall--look, ma, no mullions! When it was demolished last year, without any sort of plans for its replacement, a piece of architectural history was lost with it, and some in the preservation community were apoplectic. Neither the Port nor JetBlue cared. They had an airport to run.

Much the same thing happened at Terminal 8, continuously in operation by American Airlines from 1960 to 2008. The marquee feature was not some intergalactic shell or technologically advanced façade but a more simple, even baroque, flourish: the world’s largest stained glass window. Stretching some 317-feet, it featured billowy abstract design by Robert Sowers. When the terminal was demolished, pieces of the window were broken up and given to American staff as key chains. An architectural salvage outlet in the Village will sell you tiny red-white-and-blue panels for as little as $100. At least the two inside murals by Brazilian artist Carybe were saved, though not for New York. Originally installed as a symbol of American’s frequent flights to Latin America, two six-ton artworks were carted off to the hub in Miami.

The situation at LaGuardia, the nation’s first true airport, is little better. Built by the mayor whose name it bears through the sweat and craftsmanship of the WPA, the old Marine Terminal is home to a mural of its own Flight, the largest created by federal artists during the Depression. It was plastered over by the Port Authority decades ago and only recently restored after the campaigning of the editor of AirCargoNews.com. It is the only first-generation terminal still in use, and even then only as administrative offices.

And there is also the old control tower, with its hourglass shape and spiral of portholes, like somewhere Captain Nemo might live. Built by Robert Moses, it was one of so many World’s Fair landmarks that remade the city in the early ‘60s. Every single jet age terminal was, JFK included.

The tower was set to be replaced since the 1980s, and so it went into a tramatic state of decline. Even then, like all of these buildings, it retained a certain beauty. Until it was demolished last year, having finally been replaced by a simple beanpole of concrete next door, a cluster of black glass observation decks at its crown.

An entire generation of revolutionary architecture gone. These were the buildings American aviation used to project their power and dominance to the world, and through which a city defined air travel for generations. That is why the airlines spent so lavishly on these terminals, hiring the nation’s finest architects. It must be said that none are in business but American, the last of the legacy carriers to file for bankruptcy, though it will not be vanishing for good, like so many of JFK’s patrons.

“Romanticize them all you will, these buildings are functionally obsolete and there is really nothing you can do with them,” said Greg Lindsay, author of Aeropolis.

Terminal 5 successfully combines the old (TWA) and the new (JetBlue) behind it. (Architizer)

Architecture might be the least of New York’s problems, though. Our airports serve more than 100 million people a year. They rank as the three worst in the country for delays—Newark, JFK, then LaGuardia. Average wait times are more than twice that of other U.S. airports, where people are stuck for 10 or 15 minutes. Here, 20 minutes and up is the norm, with hours-long delays all too common.

And it is not just New Yorkers suffering. There is a ripple effect: 60 percent of delays nationwide originate with problems at one of our three airports. A 2009 cover story in Wired declared that the only way to save national aviation was to redesign the skies over Gotham.

And it’s getting worse. Last year, the mayor bragged about 50 million tourists visiting the city, a record attendance achieved in the doldrums of a down economy. Globalization has not only meant more business travelers and more demands for intercontinental flights, it has also meant a growing global middle class in places like China and Brazil. They are all of them bound for Times Square, the High Line, the Statue of Liberty.

Blame does not lie solely with the airports, their operators or the airlines. History is also to blame. These are some of the worst airports in the world because they were once some of the best. Parts of LaGuardia are no more advanced than they were in the Depression. JFK, the first jet age airport, was built piecemeal by self-possessed airlines and quickly became obsolete when bigger jets became the norm.

The lack of any central authority has left places like Terminal 3 to languish because neither the Port nor the airlines occupying them wants to take full responsibility for them, not to mention find the funds. “People came to JFK to marvel at the buildings but also to study what not to do,” said architecture critic Alastair Gordon, who wrote Naked Airport, a 320-page cultural treatise on Terminal 5.

Even the relatively young Newark is a mess. Terminal A is decades younger than its siblings across the river and still it is obsolete. This is owing to the source of so many of the industry’s problems, 9/11. Most of the shopping, eating and other facilities like elite lounges are located at the central terminal building, as is security. This means once through the magnetometer, there is little to do but sit at the gate.

Nowhere else but at the airport does a building have such a short lifespan, if terminals can even rightly be called buildings. Really, they are more like giant machines, people movers constantly in need of upgrading.

“Where else but New York could you have one of the best terminals in the world and also one of the worst?” said Richard Barone, director of transportation programs at the Regional Plan Association, referring to JetBlue’s Terminal 5 and Delta’s Terminal 3.

Last January, the RPA issued a report, Upgrading to World Class, that warned if the Port Authority and the mayors and governors surrounding it do not figure out a way to expand airport capacity, it could cost the region 125,000 jobs, $6 billion in wages and $16 billion in sales a year by 2030. The good news is there is time. The bad news is it takes time, and a substantial amount of money, to achieve these proposals.

The most frequent complaint heard from carriers to air traffic controllers is that Congress must act. It must impliment the NextGen air traffic control system, a GPS-driven system in the works since the 1980s and still not due for full implementation until 2025. In the meantime, most cellphones now come equipped with the technology, and it will probably be implanted into our brains by the time NextGen is realized. This is the same Congress that has refused to fully reauthorize the FAA since 2007, passing 22 short-term extensions instead.

There are also political potholes at home. Chris Ward, the former head of the Port Authority, fought last year to raise the Hudson River tolls by $4 in part to generate $2 billion, which would be split for new terminals at Newark and LaGuardia. The move was defeated by both governors. And there is also the matter of our vaunted real estate. Without the authoritarianism and funds of an Asian giant, there is simply no way to bulldoze a new airport into New York. Nor do we have the room of Denver or Atlanta for such a project, where the facilities are three times as large as all three of our airports combined.

A little perspective. (Regional Plan Association)

Cue the Sinatra, bring up the lights on a shiny, glorious Terminal 3. A young boy looks out through massive windows at the planes encircling the terminal, his mother’s hand resting on his shoulder. A captain smiles, tips his hat to him, and the full terminal comes into view, glowing warmly in the afternoon sun.

The opening to ABC’s Pan Am is of course fake, but the facsimile is meant to be as close to reality as with all these midcentury dramas. It could not be further from the truth then or now. “Our nostalgia is misplaced,” Mr. Lindsay said. “I don’t know that I would want to eat a meal on one of those Pan Am flights, and I certainly couldn’t afford one. Flying is just not the same, for better or worse.” It has gone from luxury to commodity, from moving the 1 percent to moving everybody else.

Things are not quite as bad as Frommer’s would have us believe, though. In December, the Port Authority released a request for expressions of interest to find a private partner to create a new central terminal at LaGuardia, and Port officials have told The Observer a similar one will be released some time this year for Newark’s Terminal A. Along with Delta’s plans at JFK, three of the worst terminals in the world will be banished from the city in a matter of years.

“We’ve got to make sure we are investing the kind of money into the airports that is necessary,” Port Authority executive director Pat Foye said in an interview. “There are a number of challenges, but we will get there.

By then there should be a hotel at Terminal 5, if a labor dispute at the neighboring Radison does not hold it up. And The Observer has also learned that last October the Port began a sweeping look at its airports, like that of the RPA’s, to figure exactly what to do with them, how to expand the runways, address the infrastructure, improve air freight—a whole other story that one high ranking City Hall official called “the real tragedy of our airports”—basically to figure out what to do to save all those jobs and billions of dollars at stake.

Our airports may be an embarrassment, but the skies seem to be clearing. At least for the next 20 years. Even then, should things go bad again, remember the sage advice of Louis CK, whose optimism every airline should replace those annoying safety videos with: You’re flying! It’s amazing! Everyone on every flight should be going OH MY GOD! You’re sitting…in a chair…in the sky!

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Slowing down? (Joe Woolhead/WTC Progress)

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.

The first was a disagreement that began in December between Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg over funding for the 9/11 Memorial. The Governor, who controls the Port Authority and thus the entire 16-acre site, says the Memorial Foundation owes the Port $300 million for infrastructure work. The Mayor, who is head of the memorial board, sees the reverse, and argues the Port owes the foundation $140 million.

He recently admitted that whatever the outcome of their disagreement, which could be bound for court, the museum will almost certainly not be open by the 11th anniversary, as had been long been the hope .

On Friday came more news that the project may have been mismanaged by former Port Authority executive director Chris Ward. He has been credited with getting the project on the right track and now headed for a job in a multinational private contractor, but both governors Christie and Cuomo have attacked him for everything from construction management at the site to the recent toll increases to help replenish the Port's capital funds—ostensibly depleted by the $10 billion World Trade Center project.

A fall report in the Post and now one from Crain’s both suggest that Mr. Ward spent lavishly and irresponsibly on the project, including a $60 million premium to get the project finished in time for the 10th anniversary. Supports of Mr. Ward counter that these were necessary steps to achieve the crucial result of an on-time memorial, and in the scheme of a multi-billion project, what is a few hundred million dollars but a rounding error? (Tell that to the people paying higher bridge and tunnel tolls, of course.)

This dispute may never fully be resolved—there will be no punitive impacts besides the criticizing of past leadership—so really it boils down to an argument between economics and emotions and which side New Yorkers fall on. Then again, there was the mega-report prepared by Mr. Ward when he arrived in 2008, that reestablished timetables for the site and largely set it on the course it currently rides. This latest white paper could have a similar effect, especially if it concludes that too much money is being spent in the name of a faster project.

Today comes the real bombshell, delivered again by Crain’s. As Towers 1 and 4 rise at the World Trade Center, racing to see who can top out first this spring—and transforming the Manhattan skyline in the process—it turns out that Larry Silverstein is prepared to cap construction on Tower 3.

He would leave one of the so-called stumps, a retail platform and a few mechanical floors atop which he might someday build. (Remember how long it took for the Hearst Tower?) The latest reports peg this at 7 stories, and far from what would have been the third tallest building in New York when it is completed.

But both Silverstein and Port Authority officials are deriding the news as “news,” or even non-news. This is nothing new they say, this has long been the plan, that without a tenant to take at least 10 floors of the 80-story tower, it would be capped for the time being. Now is simply the time when a decision must be made, and the unfortunate truth is that it does not look like there will be a suitable tenant in place in time to keep the tower rising.

Port Authority executive director Pat Foye agreed that this decision should not come as a surprise to the media or the public after a luncheon today at the New York Buildings Congress industry association. "No one's made any money in this city betting against Larry, in the city or the region or at the World Trade Center," Mr. Foye told reporters. "I don't think there was any news there. He needs a 400,000-square-foot tenant, or tenants, and my money's on that he'll get it and that tower will go forward."

He also said earlier, while on the podium, that he does not like negotiating in the press, in reference to a question about contractors not being paid on time at the World Trade Center. So the negotiations continue.

But what if that is precisely the problem. Last year, when UBS passed on taking space at 3 World Trade Center, it was seen as good news. Hey, at least people are looking. Now, nobody is looking, and it makes the front pages. Maybe things have always been as rough as they have always been and everyone just got tired of admitting it. Maybe nothing changed at ground zero except for the way the media is covering it.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

A few things that caught our attention:

• Mr. Foye seemed to have more meetings about Moynihan Station than any other project. That included at least four meetings that devoted time to “Farley’s windows,” presumably referring to the old post office stamp booths in the Farley Post Office that preservationists want to see maintained partially for that use. In a daylong trip to Washington, D.C., Mr. Foye met with a Deputy Postmaster General at the U.S. Postal Service.

• Mr. Foye’s preferred location for breakfast: Pershing Square, just across from Grand Central Terminal. He’s frequented the spot with Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, state Senator Liz Krueger, as well as Vishaan Chakrabarti, the president of the Moynihan Station joint venture between developers Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust. On July 3, he even had two breakfasts scheduled there! The first was with Alfred Puchala, managing director of Signal Equity Partners, and the second with the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, Bob Lieber.

• Despite having no public face on the project, Mr. Foye seemed to be rather involved with preparations for the West Side rail yards bids, as he had numerous meetings scheduled about the yards with the officials from the M.T.A. and the city.

• On the private real-estate personality front, Mr. Foye seemed to meet up with the Moynihan Station developers Steven Roth and Stephen Ross, of Vornado and Related, respectively, more than with any other developers in the city. He’s also had multiple meetings with Rob Speyer, presumed heir to the Tishman Speyer empire.

Enter Patrick J. Foye, Governor Eliot Spitzer’s pick to co-chair the Empire State Development Corporation, the state economic development agency. Mr. Foye, a Long Islander who once ran in far more conservative circles, has deliberately chosen to slow these projects even more.

He’s decided that the best thing to do is to give them a thorough going-over, redesigning the projects that were in tatters, replacing the previous administration’s project managers with his own picks and even questioning the endeavors that seemed, outwardly at least, like they were all set to go.

“Each project is different,” Mr. Foye told The Observer in an interview at Empire State Development’s Third Avenue offices. “We want to be able to convince ourselves and the governor and the Legislature and the taxpayers that we are getting the highest return on the resources that are made available to us.”

In his short time in office, Mr. Foye has gained praise from business leaders for his down-to-earth manner and emphasis on fiscal accountability. But he has also engendered criticism from others who are still waiting to see the outcome of all of this furniture rearranging.

This past March, for example, his office said that a new plan to expand the Javits Convention Center was expected in early May. In early May, Mr. Foye said a new design would be out soon. On Aug. 10, he told The Observer, “In September or October we’ll be making an announcement as to which direction we’ll be moving in.”

Oddly enough, one of the first fruits of Mr. Foye’s labors to emerge publicly has been his decision to keep Empire State Development exactly where it is. He has sold off an office condominium that his predecessor, Charles Gargano, had bought in lower Manhattan in order to move closer to Ground Zero. Instead, Empire State will extend its stay at its midtown location, one floor below the governor’s Manhattan office.

Due, perhaps, to a bullish commercial real estate market (or perhaps to shrewd negotiating), he has sold part of the Maiden Lane condo at a profit compared to how much his predecessor had paid for it just a few months earlier.

THE SON OF A WAITRESS AND a doorman, Mr. Foye attended Fordham University for college and law school, and then became a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, which is where he met Eliot Spitzer and his wife, Silda. Mr. Foye set up a number of offices for the firm in Europe and then returned to Long Island, where he took a high-level position at Apartment Investment and Management Co., a real estate investment trust.

In 2004, he left to become president and chief executive of United Way of Long Island—in part, he said, because he would have to move to Denver, the REIT’s headquarters, to get promoted, and in part because the illness of a family member made him reconsider his priorities.

It was in the 1990’s when he was active in the Conservative Party and became president of the Nassau County Taxpayers Committee. He ended up, thanks to Governor Pataki, as deputy chairman of the Long Island Power Authority. Five or six years ago, Mr. Foye said, he dropped his affiliation to the Conservative Party. “No political party represented my views.”

Last year, he won a seat on the Port Washington school board running on something called the “Nine Daughters Slate,” so named because its three members had that many daughters among them.

“My political views, I don’t think much matter,” Mr. Foye said. The bearded 50-year-old speaks in a curt, matter-of-fact way, as if to signal that he is going to whip the place into shape, but that no one should take it too personally. “I think the focus on accountability to the taxpayer is frankly a natural thing for someone who is part of the Spitzer administration.”

And yet his defense of the public fisc is one of his most defining characteristics. Last month, Empire State Development issued a report that called for an overhaul of the Empire Zone business tax credit program that, in the words of consultants A.T. Kearney, “demonstrate[s] a single-minded fixation on job creation and retention at any cost, defining success with metrics more appropriate to the Industrial Age.”

“I think from the standpoint of the business community, everything I hear is that he’s a breath of fresh air,” said Kathryn Wylde, the president and chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, a business group that advised on the Empire Zone report. “He is bringing a kind of rigor to economic analyses of projects that are not just aimed at getting a ribbon-cutting, and business appreciates that approach. For the real estate community, it’s going to mean a harder test to meet the standards he has imposed.”

For example, over the course of the past seven months, Mr. Foye has been in negotiations with Vornado Realty Trust and the Related Companies, which are together proposing a massive redevelopment that would uproot Pennsylvania Station, move Madison Square Garden and insert several new office towers in that area. Mr. Foye said he wants to push the developers to make a “significant contribution” toward building a new Penn Station. He expects to issue a scoping document outlining the train station project in September or October.

The expansion of the Javits Center, on the other hand, is to be a publicly funded and owned operation that is both too small and too costly in its current design, which was approved a year ago by the Pataki administration. It is the true Gordian Knot of New York real estate: If the architects add floors, it will become less attractive to convention-goers. If they enlarge the footprint, Empire State Development won’t be able to raise money from the sale of neighboring land. And as it is, the project is already over a budget that itself was over budget. And it hasn’t even gotten under way.

Mr. Foye’s staff has made detailed cost estimates of the current design and found that the cost of the Javits expansion will reach $2.9 billion, he said. That’s $1.5 billion more than conceived when the Legislature approved it in December 2004, and $1.2 billion above anticipated revenues.

Mr. Foye said he would try to lower the cost and make the design more appealing to conventioneers at the same time. But he said he would also need to ask for more money from the state, city and hotel owners—a $1.50-per-room tax was imposed to help finance the expansion.

“Certainly the cost of Javits has increased from what it had been represented last year. Construction costs generally in the city and the region have increased,” Mr. Foye said. “What we are focused on now is coming up with the right balance of program, land and cost and also making sure that it works for users and customers.”

State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat who used to hammer away at Mr. Gargano in public hearings on Javits during the Pataki era, calls Mr. Foye “an enormous improvement.” But Mr. Brodsky, chairman of the committee that oversees ESDC and other public authorities, still thinks that Mr. Foye should be thinking more boldly.

“Javits and the Empire Zone program are two examples of things where he has been remarkably cautious and where facts can push them further and faster than he has done,” Mr. Brodsky said. “I think the decision to stick to the [Javits] footprint has more to do with politics than with building a first-class facility.”

Mr. Gargano, for his part, says that he thinks well of Mr. Foye, whom he knew from their common experience in the Pataki administration. Unlike Mr. Gargano, who oversaw economic development for the entire state, Mr. Foye has a counterpart in charge of upstate.

“Pat’s superiors in the governor’s office have a right to evaluate each of these projects, but I would hope they would know how much work and effort went into these projects,” Mr. Gargano said in a telephone interview from the east end of Long Island, where he is semi-retired. “There shouldn’t be any more delays than necessary because the more delays there are, the more expensive things become.”

Perhaps nothing speaks more succinctly of the difference between these two men than the fact that people would call Mr. Gargano “Chairman Gargano,” or even “Ambassador Gargano,” since he had once represented the United States in Trinidad and Tobago. Mr. Foye insists that even reporters address him as “Pat.”

THE ONE PROJECT THAT HAS NOT received the Foye treatment is the one that a sizable percentage of New Yorkers would like to see seriously gut-renovated: Atlantic Yards. Mr. Foye has previously explained to reporters that he has not taken as hands-on an approach with the Brooklyn complex as he has with Javits and Moynihan because it is further along, and because it is more of a development by Forest City Ratner Companies than by the state.

The project’s critics counter, however, that state and city taxpayers are contributing hundreds of millions of dollars in direct grants and tax benefits. In addition, Empire State Development is trying to invoke eminent domain to take people’s property and will actually own the entire 22-acre footprint, leasing the parcels to Forest City for a few dollars, according to the General Project Plan approved in December.

Mr. Foye has proposed some oversight, especially after a parapet atop one building collapsed while asbestos workers were doing preparatory demolition work in April. However, of several oversight measures proposed in May, Mr. Foye acknowledges that only two have been undertaken so far. Empire State Development has met with public officials once in a group and seven other times with individual officials or community groups, according to the agency. Also, it has met twice with an “interagency working group.”

“They have been responsive to a certain degree, more responsive than the previous administration. That’s for sure,” said City Council Member Letitia James, an Atlantic Yards opponent. “They give the appearance that they want to address [our] concerns but there has been no follow-up.”

Mr. Foye said it is a “short-term priority” to determine whether to request formal bids for an “owner’s rep,” a firm that would represent the state on construction matters. As for an ombudsman to hear community complaints about the construction, he expects to hire one by the end of September.

Given the expected time frame for the Javits design and the Moynihan Station deal, it looks like the next three months will be busy ones for Empire State Development.

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 executive Pam Liebman told The Observer on Monday afternoon. “In this case, that’s the path we chose to take.” (Ms. Liebman was using the royal we.) “They’re good brokers; we wish them well.”

Über-broker Wendy Maitland (she’s Madonna’s broker, among many others’) is one of the recently departed. Also gone are Wilbur Gonzalez, who brought in $200 million for Corcoran in 2004 and 2005 alone—and who had the honor of representing Courtney Love’s Soho loft—and fellow senior vice president Erin Boisson Aries, who has been one of Corcoran’s top-producing brokers. Then there’s vice president Reid Price, who had already produced “more than $800 million in sales” in a decade.

They will be managing directors at a new Brown Harris Stevens wing specializing, according to the quartet’s joint statement, “in the pre-development planning, marketing and sales of exclusive, high-end, design-driven residential properties.” Basically, all and any new Manhattan development.

The brokers’ statement, e-mailed to The Observer on Tuesday, was far from a kiss-off to their former firm, and more of an embrace of their fresh corporate umbrella: “We feel that the Brown Harris Stevens commitment to excellence at the high end of the market is a perfect synergy for our vision.”

Ms. Liebman had no comment when read the brokers’ statement.

—Max Abelson

Newsday Staffers Leap to ESDC; ‘It’s Not the Same Journalism’

Errol Cockfield has joined the Empire State Development Corporation as a press secretary—the second Newsday staffer to defect to the state’s economic-development agency, which is now run by a Long Islander.

How did this happen?

The ESDC’s new senior vice president for communications, A.J. Carter, was the first hire. As Newsday’s associate business editor and business columnist, he told The Observer that he knew Pat Foye, the downstate ESDC co-chairman, back when Mr. Foye was president of the United Way of Long Island. “He’s somebody I wrote about off and on,” Mr. Carter said. In fact, he even broke the story in November of Mr. Foye’s leaving for an undefined job in the Spitzer administration. Mr. Carter, dispelling notions that his hire somehow represented a conflict of interest, said his discussions about a job came well after that.

Mr. Cockfield was one of several applicants for the job of press secretary. But since he had been stationed in Albany as bureau chief for the previous two years, and before that in Manhattan, he hardly knew Mr. Carter. Mr. Cockfield, it turned out, had the scoop in December on what job it was exactly that Mr. Foye was getting. Mr. Cockfield won’t reveal his sources, but he told The Observer that he and Mr. Foye never met until his job interview for the ESDC post.

“Errol clearly was the best,” Mr. Carter said. “The fact that we both came from the same place didn’t matter.”

Of course, it’s no secret that the newspaper industry, and Newsday in particular, has had its own troubles recently. Mr. Carter said that, after 34 years at the paper, he was ready for a change. Mr. Cockfield, a 10-year veteran, was more frank.

“It’s not the same journalism as it used to be,” he said. “In government, I felt I could have much more influence.”

—Matthew Schuerman

Can 1,250 Lap Dances Save Scores West’s Liquor License?

In the strip-club biz, throwing money at things is only common courtesy. All too often, government acts the same way. Why can’t these two sides just get along?

The State Liquor Authority on March 7 rejected a cash offer of $25,000 from embattled Manhattan meat market Scores West to settle all this stupid nonsense about losing its liquor license over a few silly prostitution charges.

Instead, the S.L.A. offered a gentlemanly counterproposal: It will take the $25,000 and then some, but only if the club and its patrons stay sober for the next two years. Then, maybe, the club can apply to get its booze permit back. (It’s still serving drinks, pursuant to a court order temporarily blocking an S.L.A.-ordered suspension.)

What’s $25,000 to Scores? Roughly 1,250 lap dances. Or, if these prostitution charges are to be believed, that’s, what, a mere 35 to 125 “sexual favors” ($200 to $700 a pop, according to the New York Post)?

Can Scores West survive on lap dances alone for two whole years? The business still has 13 years left on its lease. Ownership is reportedly mulling the S.L.A.’s counterproposal.

—Chris Shott

Blue Condo May Welcome Bald Chocolatier

All the Yorkshire-toting ladies on the Lower East Side who were looking forward to pet manicures in the ’hood will have to keep waiting. Blue Condominium, the newest high-rise to grace the neighborhood, recently rejected an offer from New Jersey—based pet boutique CanisMinor for the 3,000-square-foot retail space on its ground floor, according to Misrahi Realty.

Blue felt it would be doing a disservice to the tenants by allowing pets into the building, according to Misrahi. The anticipated barking and meowing was also an issue, despite CanisMinor’s assurances that extensive soundproofing would remedy this problem.

There’s been no official word on who or what might fill the space, which is currently listed at $14,600 a month. A broker at Misrahi said that a Blue developer spoke recently with Max Brenner, Chocolate by the Bald Man. While Brenner, which has locations in the East Village and Union Square, doesn’t sell tiny dog sweaters, it does sell a killer chocolate fondue.

—Mark Wellborn

Madison Avenue Condos Draw Madison Avenue Crowd

A very Madison Avenue crowd turned out last week for a new Madison Avenue condo. The m127 at, well, 127 Madison, drew the well-dressed and, presumably, the well-heeled. Spotting anyone over 40 was difficult, and that included the condo’s two developers, Trevor Stahelski, 36, and Kyle Ransford, 35, partners in Cardinal Investments.

“This unit’s done,” Mr. Stahelski said of the two-bedroom condo that was the site of the party. “The rest of the units are not built out yet. We didn’t want to do anything until at least one unit was done.”

Guests at the condo opening—it starts sales this month—munched on scallops wrapped in bacon, shrimps wrapped in bacon and chicken wrapped in nothing, courtesy of Candela Restaurant, and drank Italy’s two versions of Budweiser: Peroni and Moretti. They milled about, making coy small talk amidst a condo that’s going for $1.65 million.

The 10-story m127 shot thinly and sleekly into the air just down from the boutique Roger Williams Hotel at 30th Street, and joined a neighborhood that only recently got a name: Madison Square Park North. It’s an area new to the condo-building boom that’s already a few years old in Manhattan. Only four other projects are in a five-block radius, including the planned Sage Condo on 31st Street and Park Avenue, and the Sky House on 29th Street between Fifth and Madison.

But Mr. Stahelski and Mr. Ransford seem unfazed; they’ve built in Harlem and on the edge of Nolita. And, oh yes, their firm has bought three islands in Fiji for a planned resort.

—Tom Acitelli

The new buyer, the Guttmacher Institute, paid $10.2 million.

Mr. Foye said after the agency's monthly meeting that he had not decided whether or not ESDC would move into the remaining six floors at 125 Maiden or try to buy back its current location from its new owner. He also said the 8 percent profit did not take into account the expense of renting its current location. (The ESDC had been subletting at 633 Third, and had not yet moved into 125 Maiden.)

He did say, however, "We don't want to move twice, once to Maiden Lane and then again to the Freedom Tower. And I think there is something to be said about being in proximity to our colleagues in state government" that are staying on in 633 Third.

- Matthew Schuerman

Correction: An earlier post gave an incorrect sales price that Guttmacher paid.

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 two months now, workers have been renovating the hangout at the behest of the Stonewall’s new management, which includes Bill Morgan and Tony DeCicco of the neighboring Duplex piano bar. “It’s gonna be gorgeous,” one worker inside the dusty reconstruction site told The Observer earlier this winter.

In an interview with The Observer last summer, before the bar’s ownership change, Mr. Morgan was highly critical of the venue’s prior vibe under predecessor Dominick DeSimone, whom he alleged had “pushed out” the regular gay clientele in favor of a more “disruptive” crowd. Mr. DeSimone ultimately lost his lease on the space after falling behind on the $20,000 monthly rent.

Mr. DeCicco and Mr. Morgan, who later took issue with The Observer’s account, have since rebuffed all requests for comment.

—Chris Shott and John Koblin

ESDC Eyes Farley Buy Before Month’s End

The Empire State Development Corporation is paving the way to get hold of the Farley Post Office by the end of this month. The acquisition is a crucial part of the Spitzer administration’s strategy for building a new Moynihan Station and revamping Pennsylvania Station.

Shortly after coming into office in January, Pat Foye, the new downstate chairman of the ESDC, extended the option to buy Farley, but just until the end of March—an optimistic target, it seemed at the time, for wrapping up a huge real-estate deal that would have involved moving Madison Square Garden a block west, to the back end of Farley, opening up Penn Station to the sky, and erecting huge office towers around its edges on the Eighth Avenue super-block where the Garden now sits.

But it is increasingly clear that Mr. Foye will not wait until that mega-deal gets worked out before buying the post office. And having control of some of the property involved would put the state in a better position to negotiate with the private developers who own Penn Station’s air rights over who will pay how much to redo the station.

At a Feb. 28 meeting, the ESDC board agreed to seek a bridge loan or an advance from the developers that would give the agency the few million dollars it needs to close the post-office deal next month.

Robin Stout, the president of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation, a subsidiary of the ESDC, said that the agency could purchase the post office before wrapping up the larger negotiations. Neither he nor Mr. Foye would say, however, when that would happen.

“A closing date has not been scheduled, but we are committed to moving forward as quickly as we can,” Mr. Foye said.

A public hearing on the loan comes on March 12. The state Public Authorities Control Board could then approve the general project plan—the same one, it turns out, that was rejected last October—before the end of the month, when the option expires.

Will Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver veto it this time around?

—Matthew Schuerman

92nd Y Is Tribeca-Bound

Jews and Episcopalians of the world, unite!

The 92nd Street Y is moving to Tribeca. The famed Upper East Side Jewish cultural institute has landed a 15,800-square-foot lease at Trinity Church’s 200 Hudson Street. The Y will move its “Makor” and “Daytime” programs downtown. Those programs are relocating from former uptown digs at 35 West 67th Street, which was sold to the City University of New York last year.

Trinity leasing maven Jason Pizer brokered the deal, along with Janet Liff of J. Liff Co., who represented the 92nd Street Y.

—J.K.

Noho Condos: Can You Spare Rolling Papers?

“It’s very nice, without being sterile, like a lot of the new condos are now,” said a broker from the top-flight firm Key-Ventures.

He was at a March 1 party for 48 Bond, one of three new luxury-condo developments along one block of Bond Street in Noho, that little neighborhood birthed a couple of years back by the housing boom as much as by anything else. Down the street from 48 Bond rises Ian Schrager’s 40 Bond, and across the cobblestone street is 25 Bond, a former parking garage. The projects might finally very well make Noho’s rep as a place for the well-heeled to live and play.

There’s certainly a lot of interest—of 48 Bond’s 17 units, the first seven sold in a month this winter.

“It helped that both me and the other developer are going to live here,” said Romy Goldman at the March 1 party; her development partner is Donald Capoccia. “I took the whole ninth floor.”

The party at the sales center at 50 Bond Street drew about two dozen brokers within its first hour, as well as the media. Everyone sipped beers and champagne, chomped dim sum from Chinatown Brasserie, and traipsed gingerly around what was an airy rendition of a typical 48 Bond condo—all the amenities spread out over hardwood floors (walnut, to be specific) with a ceiling placed 10 feet above it.

Outside the sophisticated gathering, however, Noho struggled. A man (not a party guest) asked matter-of-factly, just beyond the sales center’s doors, at not even 7 p.m.: “Hey, man, you have any rolling papers?”

—Tom Acitelli

Levine Fires Salvo Over State Financing

Jeffrey Levine, the president of Douglaston Development and an influential real-estate developer, is resisting the cap that the state financing agency has placed on tax-exempt bonds for mixed-income apartment buildings.

Mr. Levine is one of two developers who received permission to use tax-exempt financing in the waning days of the Pataki administration. (The other one was Larry Silverstein.) Shortly after Governor Eliot Spitzer took over in January, the state Housing Finance Agency froze those projects and nine others that hadn’t gotten as far because it didn’t have the authority to issue that much tax-exempt financing.

Last week, H.F.A. president Priscilla Almodovar sent a letter to all applicants—including Mr. Levine and Mr. Silverstein—asking them to revise their applications for tax-exempt financing by March 16, limiting their requests to $1.5 million per affordable unit that they build.

“I don’t think we are resubmitting an application,” Mr. Levine told The Observer on March 2. “I believe we are having discussions with the state on this.”

Mr. Levine had applied for $2.59 million per affordable unit for a project at 316 11th Avenue, according to state filings. Limiting tax-exempt financing will drive up the developers’ costs and cut into their profits significantly.

Ms. Almodovar believes she has the authority to freeze the Douglaston and Silverstein deals even though the Public Authorities Control Board O.K.’d both in December. Together, the projects amount to $847.5 million worth of financing—which is far more than the $590 million in tax-exempt bond-granting authority the H.F.A. believes it will have available for 2007. Mr. Levine applied for, and was allocated, $191.5 million in tax-exempt bonds; Mr. Silverstein received $656 million.

While the Real Estate Board of New York has said that the bond cap would make projects difficult or impossible, Mr. Levine’s comments are the strongest signs of resistance to date.

Ms. Almodovar told The Observer on Monday that the H.F.A. had the authority to ask developers to resubmit applications because it had not issued a letter of commitment for any of the projects in question. “Mr. Levine is free to choose whether to participate in the program or not,” she said.

—M.S.

Dunkin’ Donuts Shoots for Upscale, Misses

Meet the “new look” Dunkin’ Donuts: garish orange-and-pink signage, comfortless metallic chairs, raffish menu graphics.

Kind of like the old-look Dunkin’ Donuts—and catering to the same stereotypical clientele: cops.

Around 3 p.m. on March 1, the newest corner location for Dunkin’ Donuts franchise Centurian Plaza Donuts LLC, located at 20th Street and Third Avenue, was crawling with recruits in New York Police Academy uniforms. This location, which opened last week, was supposed to herald the unveiling of a “more upscale store model” in order to lure white-collar workers away from Starbucks, according to Crain’s.

The changes rang so subtle, however, that this reporter needed to hike six blocks to the next-nearest Dunkin’ Donuts, on Third Avenue at 26th Street, to even notice them.

It seems to come down to this: The upscale look feature s trendy track lighting in the seating area; the old model uses mere Kmart-style fluorescent bulbs.

If the purveyors of the big Box O’ Joe truly want to hone in on the yuppie crowd, perhaps they should borrow a page from the Starbucks playbook and get themselves a decent wireless Internet provider.

It took about 20 minutes for this reporter to hijack an external Wi-Fi connection. By that time, a marble-frosted doughnut and small black coffee were completely consumed.

—C.S.