Stick to your back yard. (Durst Organization)

Leonine developer Douglas Durst might not be quite the public presence than his father Seymour once was—a regular in the letters to the editor column and on local talk shows, among other outlets for his restless mind—yet he still very much knows his way around a podium. Last week, he found himself in China, talking about New York, and he even seems to admit that the one investment his firm recently made just across the Formosa Strait might not have been its best.

"My experience is almost completely New York centric," Mr. Durst said at the China Alliance's US-China Investment Summit: Focus On New York Real Estate in Shenzen. "Our one experience outside of New York convinced us to stay in New York. Real Estate is always local."

He also, naturally, talked about his kids—it’s now a fourth generation business!—and how building sustainably not only provides better buildings, and thus better income, for them, but also a better world. There was talk of 4 Times Square and 1 Bryant Park, but nothing about the widely anticipated, mildly concerning West 57th Street pyramid. The full speech is below.

My grandfather and father were in real estate and my father had a strict policy of not buying anything that wasn’t within walking distance of his house.  I had the good fortune that he lived in mid-town Manhattan.

My experience is almost completely New York centric. Our one experience outside of New York convinced us to stay in New York. Real Estate is always local.

While some prefer to be diverse geographically, our diversity is over time. Our lease expirations are spread over time so that usually only 5 to 10 percent of our office portfolio expires each year, and the good years make up for the bad years.

This is not to say that one cannot invest over a diverse geography, but that to do so successfully you must have local talent involved.

I am very lucky to work in one of the most dynamic and challenging real estate cities.  My dad said to build in New York you need an architect, an engineer and two psychiatrists.

Today you need 2 architects, 2 engineers and 6 psychiatrists. The risk, competition and regulation is intense, but so is the reward.

New York has a unique formula for success.  For the past 400 years, from the earliest Dutch settlers to the 21st Century, the best and the brightest have come from across the globe to New York to make their fame and seek their fortune.

The city’s tolerance, openness, acceptance of newcomers and insatiable appetite for innovation and creativity has insulated New York from the stagnation that has plagued many of the older US cities.

In the past, workers moved to where the jobs were, but New York’s ability to attract young, educated talent has meant companies relocate here because New York is where the qualified employees are.

New York has always been a center for financial services, but the city also has thriving media, education legal, art and cultural sectors as well as a newly energized tech and new media sector.

The area south of the central Midtown business district was once a clothing manufacturing center, as these businesses left the area entered a dormant phase.

A few years ago, as tech start-up firms needed inexpensive office space they began populating South Mid-town.  Now vacancy is near zero, and rents are high.

This is the quintessential New York real estate success story.  Neighborhoods are transformed by the creative, talented and driven people that populate them creating opportunity for development.

New York’s critical mass of talent also provides opportunities for traditional development—more along the lines of “build first and the people will come.”

This is what my father and uncles did in the 1950s along Third Avenue and in the 1970s and 80s along Sixth Avenue.  Both thoroughfares were beyond the central business district when we began developing, but are now considered the heart of midtown.

Four Times Square and One Bryant Park are the Durst Organization’s two most recently completed projects comprising more than 3.7 million square feet of office space on the block bounded by 6th Avenue, Broadway, 42nd Street next to Time Square.

The site sits atop nearly a dozen subway lines and is within walking district of three of the largest intermodal transportation hubs in North America.

Besides the environmental benefits of locating close to public transportation these building will remain desirable for decades because of the simple fact that they are easy to get to.

***

We are a family-run company in a business that is well suited for family-run operations.  Our freedom from the disclosure dictates and need to demonstrate quarterly profits of a public company allows us to develop for the long-term.

We rarely if ever sell our assets and plan for our children and grandchildren, not for the next earnings report.

Our long-term investment strategy compliments our commitment to sustainability.

We build more efficient buildings not only because they use less energy, are less expensive to operate, and provide a more productive work environment, but because we are focused on providing not just an economic future for our children, but a healthy one as well.

Our latest investment epitomizes this policy.  Two years ago we purchased a $100 million equity position in One World Trade Center and also became the buildings’ manager, leasing agent and development adviser.

The short-term prospects for the building were challenging.   The building is perhaps the most complex ever built, the real-estate market has yet to recover and the competition for large tenants is intense.

When we became involved, the single tenant was Vantone’s China Center for less than 10% of the 3.1 million sqft. Despite these risks we believed that New York and Lower Manhattan is a great bet and the benefits of new and sustainable construction provide a critical edge.

With the recent signing of a lease by the US Government, the building is now over 50% leased 2 years before it opens.

The real estate investment world is rapidly changing. My father’s generation avoided partners and outside investors, but all of our recent developments include partners: The Port Authority at 1 World Trade Center, Bank of America at 1 Bryant Park, and Vantone at 855 6th Avenue.

In closing, I would like to say that wherever you invest, it is important to remember that real estate is a service industry, not a commodity.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you. I wish you good luck and am sure we will have a constructive and productive conference.

The clock is ticking for Mitt Romney. (Getty)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

For the past 10 years, the giant hole next to West Street has been referred to as Ground Zero, a bitter reminder of the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Douglas Durst. (Illustration by Joao Maio Pinto)

But soon after the Durst Organization partnered with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the glass-and-steel structure designed by Daniel Libeskind began to grow, that started to change. In a speech made just days prior to the 10-year anniversary of the tragic day, Mayor Bloomberg called on New Yorkers to stop using the moniker.

“The time has come for us to call those 16 acres what they are: The World Trade Center and the National September 11th Memorial and Museum,” the mayor admonished.

The building has now risen 90 floors, with 14 left to build.

“Last year we had a very successful year with the World Trade Center and we hope to continue that in the new year. This year we hope to top off the building and get it closed,” Mr. Bloomberg continued. He said the building is more than 50 percent leased.

With that project headed for completion and many others under his belt, Mr. Durst, a 40-year member of the Real Estate Board of New York, is the obvious pick to be this year’s honoree for the coveted “Bernard H. Mendik Lifetime Leadership in Real Estate” award.

Mr. Mendik, who died in 2001, was a strong and successful advocate during his tenure as the head of REBNY. Through his lobbying, he was able to successfully repeal taxes and city regulations on landlords.

“It’s a great honor,” Mr. Durst said of the award. “Bernard Mendik was a close friend of mine and a mentor in business.”

A third-generation developer in the city, Mr. Durst is a fixture in Manhattan real estate.

“When I am in Florida during shark season I can swim in the ocean because, as a New York City real estate developer, I get a professional courtesy,” he joked.

The Dursts, of course, are one of the pre-eminent real estate families in the city. His great grandfather

Joseph Durst bought his first property in 1915 on 34th Street. The Durst Organization continued to grow as it acquired more buildings in Midtown. Seymour Durst, Mr. Durst’s father, took over the company in 1974 and continued to expand, buying properties in Times Square and developing office buildings on Third and Sixth avenues.

In 1966, fresh out of the University of California, Berkeley, Douglas Durst joined the company. He teased that if he hadn’t gone into real estate he would have ended up in a radically different field. “I minored in civil disobedience at Berkeley so I would be a Wall Street Occupier,” he said.

But joking aside, that Berkeley sensibility has helped change the way New York builds. Mr. Durst has been a leader in creating more environmentally friendly buildings. In 2004, the Durst Organization replaced all the windows in its 30-story building at 655 Third Avenue with double-glazed windows that deflect glare and heat, reducing energy consumption.

The Bank of America building at 1 Bryant Park, completed in 2009, is widely regarded as one of the most environmentally friendly skyscrapers in the world. The building has advanced air-filtration systems for air coming in and out of the building. Rainwater is collected and filtered for use. The elevator system is designed to reduce riderless trips. There is a co-generation plant in the building that provides most of its electricity, and the urinals are waterless.

All of the advances, pushed by Mr. Durst, earned a LEED platinum rating for the building by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Mr. Durst said that the company is committed to continuing to build greener buildings. “In 2012, we’re going to be starting two new residential buildings, which for environmental standards surpass anything that has been done before,” Mr. Durst said. He said that new greener materials and mechanical systems will put the structures far ahead of any government requirements.

Mr. Durst’s commitment to the environment extends outside the city as well. In 1987, he purchased the McEnroe Farm in Millerton, N.Y., one of the largest state-certified all-organic produce and beef farms in the country. “The farm continues to grow,” Mr. Durst said. “We expanded it an additional 500 acres [for grazing] and expanded our meat department.”

In the coming year, the New York construction scion said he hopes to expand ridership on the New York Water Taxi.

Mr. Gosling's performance was "close," but "not as good as the real thing," Mr. Durst told The New York Times' Charles Bagli and Kevin Flynn, who have covered the Durst case since the late '90s. “Parts made me cry,” added Mr. Durst, who showed up on set during the filming and saw the movie at a private screening arranged by Magnolia Pictures.

During production of All Good Things — "part researched docudrama that claims to point to the truth," according to Messrs. Bagli and Flynn — the lawyers for the Durst Organization promised to sue upon the film's release. At issue was Mr. Jarecki's depiction of Seymour Durst as an instrument for criminal businesses in old Times Square. "[The filmmakers] can do whatever they want, but to misrepresent somebody's life story when there are live relatives around strikes me as—um—his right, but hitting below the belt," former Manhattan borough president Ruth Messinger told The Observer earlier this month.

With the film slated for theatrical release this week, the Durst Organization has pivoted away from legal action. “Fortunately this movie will be seen by so few people that litigation would be superfluous,” Douglas Durst told The Times.

Earlier: Seymour Durst Did Play Tennis: Otherwise, New Film Gets Lots Wrong About Real Estate Lore

He was talking about the reaction to the ad that Mr. Durst and fellow real estater Anthony Malkin placed that morning in major New York newspapers. The ad objected to moving ahead with the Freedom Tower.

The $2.4 billion tower, the ad said, "is the legacy of poor planning and decision-making by the Pataki administration," and will be "occupied by government agencies at overly expensive rents."

The duo called the 2005 redesign by David Childs "extraordinarily expensive to build and cumbersome for tenants."

Mr. Durst said that the ad, written like an open letter, was planned well before Monday's announcement by Governor Spitzer that he supported building the Freedom Tower after all.

"We had been working on doing an op-ed for a while," Mr. Durst said. "When it became apparent that something was happening this week with the Port Authority, there wasn't time for that. For an op-ed, they do a lot of fact-checking. It would have gone through a procedure."

The Port Authority on Thursday will discuss and likely approve construction contracts for the Freedom Tower. Mr. Durst said that he did not expect the ad buy, in The New York Times, The New York Post, The New York Daily News and The New York Observer, would change the commissioners' minds.

"I don't know if we have made any impact except we feel we can sleep at night," he said. "What's being done now is so wrong that we both felt we could not keep silent about such an important project."

Both the Malkin and Durst families own considerable commercial real estate in Midtown. Mr. Durst said they were not worried about competition from Ground Zero because Lower Manhattan rents are much lower.

Rather, he said they were continuing a family tradition: his father, Seymour Durst, and Mr. Malkin's grandfather, Lawrence Wien, had formed the Committee for a Reasonable World Trade Center to protest the original twin towers in the 1960s. The ad this time around was sponsored by something called The Continuing Committee for a Reasonable World Trade Center.

- Matthew Schuerman

Update and Correction: The Real Estate heard from Anthony Malkin Thursday morning (an earlier version of this post mistakenly said it was his father, Peter, who placed the ad). He had received "close to 100 e-mails" about the ad, all of them supportive. "I was just on the phone doing another transaction with a senior officer of a major pension fund who said, 'You are actually spot on,'" Mr. Malkin said. "Maybe one shouldn't expect to hear from the people speaking against you, but I don't know of anyone aside from the contractors who want to build the building who probably want to see us pressing ahead on this."

It hit one 31-year-old television writer as he was sitting in his living room, watching Mr. Martin's demanding fourth-round match against Carlos Moya. "I'm older than Todd Martin," he said suddenly, bemusedly, into the air.

The American player went on to win in five sets, proceeding snappily through the quarterfinals, but the damage had been done.

"Is that what 30 looks like?" wondered the tennis-loving males of Gotham. Gray, stringy, tired ?

All the commentators made soothing noises about Mr. Martin's premature "elder statesman" appearance. But it certainly didn't help that the bald, shiny Andre Agassi, 30–once the very picture of frisky 90's male vigor–had gone down in Samsonesque straight sets by the second round (distracted by thoughts of his ailing female kinfolk). Nor that balding, sweaty Pete Sampras, 29 ( 29 !), was so handily vanquished in the final. "By this young, smooth Russian-beefcake guy!" anguished one fellow in finance who would identify himself only as "older than Pete Sampras." Elwood Reid, the 33-year-old Park Slope author of a novel called Midnight Sun , tried the old age-brings-character defense. "I don't want to see these Stepford-male players who look like they come out of a punch-press factory," he huffed.

–Alexandra Jacobs

Seymour Durst's Empire of Ephemera

One day in the early 1960's, Seymour Durst, the patriarch of the Manhattan real estate family, was browsing the shelves of a bookstore in Paris when he ran across a large hardcover, New York , by Walter Klein. The book was in French, which Seymour didn't speak, but it was filled with pictures of his hometown, so he bought it. He returned from vacation, and bought another book about New York. And another. Soon, he was spending his weekends trolling through Manhattan's antique shops and rare bookstores. Bag by bag, he filled the family's 12-foot-wide townhouse on East 48th Street with old books, maps, magazines and stuff he'd picked up off the street.

When his grown children began to worry that the sheer weight of the collection might bring the house down, Durst just bought a bigger place, a brownstone on East 61st Street. He hung a sign on the door: "The Old York Library." When he died in 1995, at 81, Durst left behind more than 9,000 books, 3,000 photos and one real estate empire. His kids kept the real estate. The books they gave away, to the City University of New York.

On Sept. 7, Durst's birthday, the collection was opened to the public for the first time in its new home, the university's Graduate-Center library in the old B. Altman building on Fifth Avenue at 34th Street. On the main floor, academics mixed warily with real estate royalty like Newmark & Company's Jeff Gural and Insignia/ESG's Mary Ann Tighe. Meanwhile, Douglas Durst, Seymour's son, stole away to give an impromptu tour of the Seymour B. Durst Old York Library and Reading Room downstairs. "This book–this is the first one," Mr. Durst said, running a finger down New York 's colorful dust jacket. "He realized that there was no real central collection of New York books in the city. So he started collecting."

The Old York Library, like every private collection, is a reflection of its assembler. In a profession that rewards self-promoters and cutthroats, Seymour Durst was different. He was taciturn, bookish. He was slight ("a Jewish leprechaun," one writer called him) and wore glasses with thick black frames. He walked everywhere. He cut his own hair. He favored old, fraying suits, on the theory, his daughter Wendy Durst Kreeger said, that "they must be good if they lasted this long." He was always smoking a cigar.

He incessantly composed letters to newspapers, protesting bad zoning, the national debt and government intervention in the marketplace. When they stopped printing his letters, he began placing small-print ads at the bottom of the front page of The New York Times –"Men stopped wearing hats in the 1940's, women in the 1950's. In the 1960's we stopped using our heads altogether"; "The Gotham Law: If something has not gone wrong, the city will see that it does"; and "Resurrect one Moses–or the other." He erected a "national debt clock" on one of his Avenue of the Americas buildings. The clock, which had lately been running down, not up, was ceremonially shrouded the same day as the library dedication.

Durst's collection includes a copy of the 1811 Commissioners' Grid Map , which established Manhattan's numbered streets and avenues–but it's best known as a repository of ephemera. Durst collected Ziegfeld playbills, issues of the New York Folklore Quarterly , old copies of the Jewish Yellow Pages and 20,000 vintage postcards. In one corner of the exhibition is the stuff Durst had in his bathroom, oddities he salvaged when he evicted old tenants from some of his Times Square properties–a sign picturing a brunette with a bandana and the words "Ancient Rome … Take a Free Look … Body Rub," a crank-turned movie of the "Jungle Queen," and a posted disclaimer. It reads: " Nude Encounter Sessions: We do not offer any services involving a scientific system of activity to the muscular structure of the human body by means of stroking, kneading, tapping and vibrating with the hands or vibrators for the purpose of improving muscle tone and circulation. Our services have no physical therapeutic value –The Management ."

Durst had secretly bought the Times Square properties with the hope of erecting office towers there. When his lubricious land holdings were revealed, public feeling and newspapers–in particular, The New York Times –turned against him. The government tried to condemn his properties as part of the 1980's Times Square redevelopment plan, but Durst held onto them long enough to allow his son to build the family's new Condé Nast tower.

The reading room, where Mr. Durst was giving his tour, is meant to evoke Durst's 61st Street townhouse. (The family sold the house itself in 1999, for $2.8 million, to a plastic surgeon from Connecticut.) At the center of the room is a coffee table, flanked by a pair of narrow, institutional-looking couches. An Oriental rug covers the floor. A large breakfront against the back wall holds one of Durst's most notable volumes: an original copy of Common Sense , with Thomas Paine's own notes in the margins, as well as his two favorites, J.A. Mitchell's The Last American and E.B. White's Here is New York .

"It's missing having everything scattered all over the place," Mr. Durst said. He walked over to a black-and-white photograph on the wall showing a large room cluttered with books and papers. He pointed to a tiny figure, in the back corner of the photo. "You can see Seymour sitting back there on his couch."

Durst's daughter, Ms. Kreeger, oversaw the decoration of the reading room, as well as the cataloguing of his collection, which Durst arranged according to a schematic he called "the Durst Quintessimal System." The system was roughly modeled on Thomas Jefferson's theories of library organization. Every room in the old house was given over to a certain category: "The Infrastructure Room," "The Art and Theater Room." "Architecture" was consigned to a closet upstairs. He was, after all, a developer.

–Andrew Rice

Come and Get It

Here are the most recent posts on the Condé Nast cafeteria suggestion board:

"No excuse for tomatoes that aren't juicy and red. Tomatoes that are green inside aren't very good on a sandwich." – Anonymous

"Is it possible that the vending machines could accept $100 bills?" – Blinda Blue

"Throw the salad bar a life vest! It's drowning in oil!" – Anonymous

"The grilled chicken on the salad bar is very 'thick.' Is there anyway to make thinner, more well-done pieces? Thanks!" – Judith Goldminz

"Can we get PB&J as a lunch option?" – Anonymous

"I notice the Gummi Bear quantity has decreased. Why? Same price, smaller quantity." – Anonymous

"Most of the soups are too thin and lack complexity. Soups chunky with vegetables would be welcome." – Anonymous

Mr. Durst, the sardonic 55-year-old heir to one of the city's greatest real estate empires, has tried for a decade to seize control of an immensely valuable strip of real estate on the west side of Sixth Avenue between 42nd and 43rd streets. There, Mr. Durst would builda2million-square-foot tower to complement his marquee project, the Condé Nast building, which sits at the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway.

But in recent weeks, a new round of behind-the-scenes squabbles-one featuring a cameo appearance by Donald Trump-has broken out between Mr. Durst and a handful of landowners who own key chunks of the long-coveted property. So an exasperated Mr. Durst is trying to persuade state officials to condemn the site and turn it over to him, once he finds a tenant for his planned tower.

Mr. Durst already owns 86 percent of the contested land, which comprises the eastern two-thirds of the block that now is home to the Condé Nast building. Standing in his way are several landowning families who have resolutely clung to their parcels. Thanks to the impasse, the property-a grimy strip of storefronts that runs along the Deuce and turns the corner onto Sixth

Avenue-remains the block that Times Square forgot. The forlorn stretch mocks the new kid-friendly 42nd Street, with a neon "Peep-o-Rama" sign and a video store offering old classics like "Brides of the Beast" and "Three on a Meathook."

Mr. Durst's campaign to win the property through condemnation has intensified the protracted battle among the landed

families. For example, The Observer has learned that Joe Bernstein, whose family owns four of the coveted plots, is secretly trying to get Donald Trump's help in buying out Mr. Durst's parcels. Mr. Trump's involvement is unlikely at best. But Mr. Bernstein also said he's in talks with a "major hotel group" interested in the site. And he is telling any fat-walleted builder who will listen that Mr. Durst can be persuaded to sell at the right price, which may indicate that Mr. Bernstein is intent on holding out on Mr. Durst for as long as possible.

That's not all. In recent weeks, Mr. Durst was certain that he had struck a deal for the option to buy another long-coveted parcel on 42nd Street-this one owned by a little-known Times Square fixture named Richard Maidman. But after the two men became locked in a backstage bickering match over a sign to be posted on Mr. Maidman's building, the parcel eluded Mr. Durst's grasp.

Small wonder, then, that Mr. Durst is trying to enlist the state's help. He confirmed in an interview with The Observer that he is lobbying officials to consider condemnation.

"The state has indicated to me that they'll condemn the site under appropriate circumstances," Mr. Durst said, "if, for instance, we find an appropriate tenant user for the site."

But the landowners whose property may be seized have roundly denounced Mr. Durst's threat of condemnation as a naked land grab. They are likely to wage a nasty court battle that could hold up Mr. Durst's dream scheme for years to come.

"We would fight it tooth and nail," said Mr. Bernstein. "He's using the state to buy out people he can't buy out. He's using condemnation for his own private purpose-to develop an office tower for a private tenant. It's a threat to try to get everybody in place."

Mr. Durst's latest threat has reignited a long-simmering feud between himself and Mr. Bernstein. It's the latest chapter in an endless real estate melodrama involving a series of families whose history is as intertwined with Times Square as New Year's Eve and George M. Cohan. As The New York Times noted recently, the Bernstein family had long dreamed of developing the site itself.

Flip-Flop Artist?

In the 1980's, Mr. Durst's father and mentor, the late Seymour Durst, a virtuoso of land assemblage in his own right, agreed to lease the Bernsteins the property they needed for their plan. But at the last moment the Durst family killed the deal, citing news reports tying the Bernsteins to Ferdinand Marcos, the late Philippine dictator. The move apparently infuriated the Bernsteins.

Hard feelings are still very much in evidence. "He flip-flops all the time," Mr. Bernstein said of Mr. Durst. "One day he's selling and one day he's not. He goes back and forth. It was a lot easier dealing with his father."

Mr. Durst refused to respond to Mr. Bernstein's assault, except to say: "I miss my father, too."

It's not the first time Mr. Durst has dangled the threat of condemnation to counter his opponents' refusal to hand over the land. Last spring, state officials indicated they would consider condemning the property if Mr. Durst managed to entice Nasdaq, the electronic stock market that is a subsidiary of the National Association of Securities Dealers, into his planned building. The talks with Nasdaq collapsed when it decided to remain in its lower-Manhattan home.

But now Mr. Durst is in talks with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Pricewaterhouse Coopers, both of whom have expressed an interest in moving into the building, according to a source familiar with the ongoing negotiations. Since the Nasdaq talks collapsed, the source added, Mr. Durst has had a number of meetings with the state officials, in which he made the case for condemnation.

Charles Gargano, the state economic development czar, declined to comment on the talks. But he said that the state would consider his request "if it's something that we think is an important economic development project. But no decision has been made."

Condemnation is an extremely sensitive issue in the real estate community. Some see it as little more than a state-sponsored land grab. As it happens, Mr. Durst's late father offered a similar view back in the early 1990's. At the time, the Dursts had just emerged from a long and victorious battle against a government-sponsored Times Square renewal plan for office towers that would have competed with those owned by the Durst family.

"Condemnation procedures represent the government's most direct method of stifling the market economy and discouraging entrepreneurs from investing," Seymour Durst wrote in a 1992 opinion piece for Newsday .

But Durst the younger defended the use of condemnation in the case of his current quest. He pointed out that his father had, at times, supported condemnation of holdouts. The justification in this case? "Economic development," he said. "[The project] will create jobs and tax revenues for the city and state."

No Trump Card

Condemnation may be Mr. Durst's best hope. After all, given the bad blood between Mr. Durst and Mr. Bernstein, it's not surprising that the latter would torment Mr. Durst with the specter of Mr. Trump's involvement. Mr. Bernstein said he had had several discussions with Mr. Trump, hoping to interest him in the property.

Mr. Trump apparently isn't interested. "I'm doing other things that are frankly much more exciting," he said. He declined comment on the talks, but added: "It's unlikely that I'd be involved."

Meanwhile, in recent weeks, Mr. Durst almost managed to lay his hands on another long-coveted piece of land: the parcel owned by Mr. Maidman, which is home to a soot-encrusted 19-story building with a Fun City video store on the first floor. According to a source familiar with the situation, Mr. Durst and Mr. Maidman had signed a deal giving Mr. Durst the option to buy the property. In exchange, Mr. Durst would have allowed Mr. Maidman to hang an enormous sign on the building. The signed deal was put in escrow.

But soon after, the source said, Mr. Maidman asked Durst Organization executives to rip up the deal-without warning. Mr. Durst refused. But since the deal is in escrow, Mr. Durst apparently has no way of enforcing it. The property, which the Dursts had been after for 10 years, slipped away. Neither Mr. Durst nor Mr. Maidman would comment.

Despite these apparent setbacks, Mr. Durst remains confident that he will one day launch his dream project, which is to be named "One Bryant Park." In fact, his assurance is on display on 42nd Street itself, where an enormous banner hangs from a one-story Durst-owned building on the as-yet-undeveloped property.

The banner reads: "The Durst Organization is pleased to announce that the construction of One Bryant Park will begin in the 21st Century."

Mr. Durst had better hurry-he only has 100 years.

Mr. Durst hadn't prepared himself for his collision with the front page of The New York Times . Looking at the supermarket newspaper rack, he was socked by a tremendous, lurid, 6-inch color photograph of his stricken building, 4 Times Square. Its scaffolding had buckled in midsection, looking like a flimsy toy mauled by a bored child. Chunks of steel seemed to be dangling perilously over one of the busiest intersections in the world. With a single memorable image, The New York Times had enshrined the building as a kind of vertical Titanic , a monument to misfortune rendered in the intricate details and subtle hues of an oil painting.

Mr. Durst was stunned.

"The picture obviously was quite beautiful. It's a striking picture," he recalled in his first extensive interview since the accident. "But it was a blow. This [the Conde Nast building] was something that had been the focus of my business life for three years. It clearly meant a tremendous amount to me. It was just a blow to see that picture there."

For Mr. Durst, an heir to one of New York's greatest real estate empires, 4 Times Square meant many things. It was his first big solo effort after the death of his father, the leprechaun-like builder Seymour Durst. It was a symbol of good-guy, environmentally sensitive development. And it was a bold grab for a key piece of Times Square at a time when his competitors were too frightened to gamble on what is now one of the most coveted chunks of real estate on the planet.

But in one horrifying moment, the building's fortunes-and, by extension, his own-had taken an abrupt, downward plunge. Rivals, old and new (and perhaps simply perceived), seemed poised to pounce on him in his moment of sudden weakness. Amid the terrible aftermath of the accident, he persuaded himself that The New York Times -published by the Sulzberger family, relentless boosters of the new Times Square-had delivered an intentional dig at him with its in-your-face display of his crippled building. More was coming: Less than 48 hours later, he turned on the television and was dismayed to see Mayor Rudolph Giuliani speaking in tones usually reserved for cabbies and porn-shop perverts as he attacked Mr. Durst's offer of $50,000 to a city emergency assistance fund as "inadequate". And to add to his burdens, lawyers plotting class-action suits were rounding up scores of Mr. Durst's afflicted neighbors-whose plight, as the disaster unfolded, was all too visible to the developer from windows in the Durst Organization's headquarters at Sixth Avenue and 45th Street.

"It's all been very much a blur," Mr. Durst said. "I'd been extremely proud of this building. It was going to be something that I created. It took tremendous effort. It's quite difficult to have something you're proud of all of a sudden be responsible for tremendous havoc and somebody's death."

Mr. Durst was sitting in a sparsely appointed office in the Durst organization's headquarters on a recent afternoon. Reserved and watchful, he leaned back in his chair and frowned at a wall as he struggled to perform what is clearly one of his least favorite activities: stringing together sentences in the presence of a stranger. As scion of one of the city's most storied real estate dynasties, Mr. Durst oversees an empire of six and a half million square feet, with a total of nine skyscrapers on Sixth and Third avenues. But he is not given to the swagger or bravado so common among Manhattan's real estate barons. He likes to show visitors pictures of himself in his long-haired Berkeley days. "I'm not famous for speaking," he said at one point.

From Hell's Kitchen to Hell

In two long interviews with The Observer , however, Mr. Durst narrated his nightmare. It began at around 8:30 A.M. on July 21. He had just left his apartment in a Durst-owned building in Hell's Kitchen, where he stays during the week, when an employee called him on his cellular phone.

"Parts of the building had fallen," Mr. Durst recalled being told. "I asked whether there had been any fatalities, and the response was, these were huge pieces; there must have been. [I believed] there were sure to be numerous deaths, perhaps scores of deaths. It was a feeling of complete dread." A vision flashed before him: "It was one of smashed buildings, smashed cars and mangled bodies."

He gathered an entourage of employees and rushed to the roof of a Durst-owned building at West 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue. From that vantage point, they could look down at the scaffolding and at the streets below, crowded with emergency vehicles. "The view was devastating," Mr. Durst said.

Several hours later, in the Durst headquarters on West 45th Street, Mr. Durst and several executives walked tentatively into a corner office with three picture windows overlooking 4 Times Square. The blinds were down. Mr. Durst and two other executives each slowly raised a blind. Suddenly, there it was: a close-up view of the wound itself. Huge pieces of steel were dangling high above the streets. Mr. Durst and his co-workers stared out the window for two solid minutes.

"Nobody said a word," recalled Bob Fox, the architect on the project. "We were looking in awe at the destruction of what we would characterize as a dream project. It was just the most poignant moment of my life."

"Looking up at it [from the window], you saw how much damage there was," Mr. Durst said.

The rest of the day was filled with phone calls and meetings with lawyers and city engineers. There were highs and lows as reports of a casualty were confirmed and discounted and confirmed again. Efforts to contact Mr. Durst's insurer, the Liberty Mutual Group, were unsuccessful for hours-because the insurance company's New York offices are in 1133 Sixth Avenue, which, he said, had been evacuated.

Then there was the maimed scaffolding, dangling high above the city. "Some people suggested that it should be collapsed [by] blowing the supports out with dynamite," Mr. Durst said. "But that would probably have caused a tremendous amount of more damage. The pressure on us was constant from the city and from our concerns to try and get something accomplished." The plan they settled on was to wrap the building in a huge black curtain. The material would later lend an eerie, corpse-like demeanor to the building. "I try to stay away from the word 'shroud,'" Mr. Durst said.

For much of the day, Mr. Durst and his executives relied on radio news for updates on injuries. They were elated by one thing: No one, it seemed, had been killed. Employees were regularly dispatched to the front lines to learn what they could from the police.

Too Good to Believe

"It felt like a miracle had occurred," Mr. Durst said. "You're hoping against hope. But then we heard that there was somebody missing from the Woodstock [hotel]. They said that the dogs had sniffed somebody, but they weren't letting anybody in to confirm."

By late afternoon, it was official. Thereza Feliconio, an elderly woman who, as The Times later put it, "had a love of the lights and glitter that drew her to live in Times Square," had been buried under rubble in her room. "Everything became very somber," Mr. Durst said. "It lowered our spirits even more."

From the start, there was tension between the lawyers and the public relations people over the thousands of displaced workers and residents roaming the area like refugees. The P.R. people (and Mr. Durst himself) advocated immediate assistance; the lawyers advised caution.

Mr. Durst and Tishman Realty and Construction, the builder of 4 Times Square, tried to resolve the problem by offering $50,000 to a city fund, for use as emergency assistance for displaced neighbors. That decision would haunt Mr. Durst for days. In the frenzy of finger-pointing after the accident, the other powerful entities with a huge stake in Times Square-namely, The New York Times and Mayor Giuliani-made a public display of their contempt for his offer.

When Mr. Durst read a Times editorial on Saturday, July 25, describing his offer as "measly"-two days after the Mayor called it "inadequate"-he stormed out of his Westchester house (where he stays on weekends) and went for a bike ride through the hills near exclusive Katonah. The excursion did not have the calming effect Mr. Durst had hoped for. He returned home and, vowing to demand a retraction and an apology, he called his lawyer, who informed him that he didn't have a case. But Mr. Durst maintains that the Times editorial obscured the fact that the $50,000 was a one-day gift that could be offered to those in need of assistance at that moment-not a final offer of solace to the afflicted. (A separate news story the day before had made that exact point.)

"I was outraged by their attack on us at a time when we were quite frankly exhausting ourselves to remedy the situation," Mr. Durst said. "I just found it terribly unfair. I used language that I don't usually use."

A Family Feud?

The scathing editorial might simply have been the result of Mr. Durst's colossal bad luck. After all, his project caused a massive accident a block away from the most powerful newspaper in the world. But Mr. Durst maintains some of The Times ' coverage of the accident-from the editorial to the sappy descriptions of victims' pets to the front-page photo of 4 Times Square-reflects an "antipathy" on the paper's part toward the Durst family. He insists that the antipathy can be traced back to the 1970's, when Seymour Durst was encroaching on Times turf by buying up properties in the West 40's, between Sixth and Seventh avenues. The Durst family and the Times editorial board have historically been at odds over the direction of development in Times Square.

Mr. Durst is immersed in the newspaper's coverage of his family. He offers visitors a thick scrapbook filled with clips that, he believes, prove his point. There's a 1989 Op-Ed involving his family called "42nd Street Landlords: Greed Inc." and a 1976 editorial describing one of his father's deals as "farce in the classic style of Minsky's burlesque." And Mr. Durst charges that somebody at The Times once forgot to run a notice of a memorial service for his father, a reclusive widower and self-described "monarchist"who wrote dozens of letters to The Times over the years. "It crossed my mind that it could be possible that it was purposeful," said Mr. Durst.

To further illustrate the point, Mr. Durst described being present at a meeting between his father and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The Times , in the early 1990's. Mr. Sulzberger was helping form a Times Square Business Improvement District, but the elder Mr. Durst didn't want his Sixth Avenue buildings included in the district. Mr. Sulzberger apparently wasn't pleased.

"Arthur Jr. asked my father if [he] knew why it was called Times Square" Mr. Durst recalled. "Seymour was unconvinced. And [Mr. Sulzberger's] parting words were, there's an old saying not to pick a fight with someone who buys printer's ink by the barrel … I've since wondered whether the Sulzberger family felt that we were intruding on their area."

Nancy Nielsen, a Times spokesman, confirmed that the meeting had taken place, although she said Mr. Sulzberger denied making those remarks. And she declined to address Mr. Durst's charges of bias against his family, pointing out that the editorial and Op-Ed pages were simply opinion forums: "My response would be that Mr. Durst is entitled to his view, and leave it at that."

Meanwhile, Mr. Durst's discontent may continue for a long time to come. The company has yet to tally up total damages of the accident, which damaged three Durst-owned buildings on 44th Street, puncturing roofs and skylights and knocking fire escapes off building facades. But Mr. Durst said he believed Liberty Mutual would cover all damages.

Other kinds of damage will not be so easy to repair. The city, along with Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, is investigating the accident, and Mr. Giuliani has said he might file a civil lawsuit. According to an executive familiar with the situation, the city has impounded the entire scaffolding as part of the investigation, and is now shipping off chunks to a site in Brooklyn.

Finally, Mr. Durst and his insurance company are staring at a swarm of claims and lawsuits-some of which have an undeniably comic tone. One downtown law firm is circulating a letter and retainer agreement among tenants at 156 West 44th Street. It asks the afflicted to tally up damages-asking, for instance, "whether your pet was stranded during the evacuation." It even requests "a summary, with cost, of food spoilage suffered as a result of the occurrence." "It's a huge public relations and financial and legal project to deal with the aftermath of this accident, and it's going to go on for a long, long time." said Jeffrey Katz, the president of Sherwood Equities, which owns two buildings on Times Square.

For the time being, Mr. Durst has no choice but to take solace in the support of friends. A week or so after the accident, a developer who started in the business with Mr. Durst 30 years ago called to offer condolences.

"It's just so ironic that this happened to your family," Mr. Durst's friend told him. "If you were just another sleazy landlord, this wouldn't have happened."