The Municipal Art Society is worried that the Midtown East upzoning would allow development that would block views of the Chrysler Building, among other landmarks.

Based on the arguments made by those both for and against the Midtown East rezoning—a "sweeping proposal," wrote New York magazine architecture critic Justin Davidson, with "swollen ambitions for the skyline"—one might think that the proposed land use change, which would affect 78 blocks between Second and Fifth Avenues and East 39th and East 57th Streets, would be a dramatic revision of New York City's most hallowed business district.

Crain's New York Business calls the plan "essential." The Post’s Steve Cuozzo, ever a friend to big real estate, says it's “vital to the city's future, a way to ensure that Manhattan's most desirable commercial zone can compete in the future with global capitals like London and Shanghai."

Meanwhile, opponents of the plan to rezone the area north of Grand Central Terminal have painted it as a death knell for some of New York's most iconic sites, and a massive imposition on an already-overburdened transit system. "The rezoning study makes no mention of protected-view corridors," wrote starchitect Robert A.M. Stern, coming out against the plan in today's New York Times. "I can hardly make my way to the stairways and escalators that lead to the Lexington Avenue subway platforms."

The Municipal Art Society, which has proposed landmarking 17 pre- and postwar towers in the area (the Historic Districts Council has a list of 33), commissioned mock-ups of potential new towers that could obscure the district's most famous buildings, writing, "The verifiable photo simulations show how iconic buildings such as the Chrysler building will not be visible from many vantage points if development occurs as proposed."

But delve into the actual numbers on the proposed rezoning, and it starts to look like much ado about nothing. As the Wall Street Journal’s Eliot Brown pointed out on Twitter, only 3.8 million square feet of office development is expected beyond what would be built without any zoning changes, according to an environmental assessment released by the city on Friday, or 4.4 million square feet of total extra development taking into account all uses. (While more than 14 million square feet of new office space could rise, two-thirds of that would replace existing buildings.)

Compare this to the rezoning of Manhattan's far west side earlier in Mr. Bloomberg's term, where nearly 26 million square feet of new office space was allowed in Hudson Yards—an area with far worse transit and less new investment ($8.4 billion for East Side Access, which will bring the Long Island Rail Road into Grand Central, versus just $2.1 billion for the 7 train extension to 34th Street and 11th Avenue)—and the Midtown East rezoning starts to look downright puny.

With just 3.8 million square feet of new office development expected out of the plan in an area that already contains 70 million square feet of office space, the Midtown East upzoning would barely add more floorspace to the district than the Port Authority is building in One World Trade Center—3.5 million square feet of floorspace in one tower alone.

Even the Williamsburg and Greenpoint rezonings, which added over 30 million square feet of residential development rights, dwarf what Mr. Bloomberg and the real estate industry want to add to Midtown East.

Given the relatively small numbers involved, both sides should drop the histrionics: the Grand Central upzoning just isn't that grand, and isn't going to make or break Midtown East either way.

Too big, too fast? (DCP)

Easy does it. That is the message from Councilman Dan Garodnick, echoing concerns of two Midtown community boards, that the Bloomberg administration is moving too fast in its plans to rezone Midtown East to allow for taller skyscrapers.

The Councilman, who represents the eastern flank of Manhattan, applauded the plan in a letter [PDF] to Planning Commish Amanda Burden last week shared with The Observer, but he worries to plan is so complex, it needs more time to be considered. The Department of City Planning argues there is enough time to get the job done before the Bloomberg administration is out in a year and a half.

"It's certainly important to ensure that our Midtown core remains competitive with cities around the world," Mr. Garodnick told The Observer. "At the same time, we need to approach this rezoning proposal deliberately. I understand that the mayor's term has less than 500 days remaining, but that should not be the prime factor in driving the time frame for such an important proposal."

Primarily, Mr. Garodnick wants the scoping session, when the framework is solidified, pushed back six months to March. In the letter, he also criticized plans to release an initial framework in the coming weeks, "before Labor Day—when many New Yorkers are totally disengaged from the political process." The plan was to have the massive rezoning—both in space and scope—enter public review by the first quarter of next year, but pushing back scoping would likely push that into the summer or fall. The rezoning would almost certainly be approved by the next administration as a result.

There is some concern this could scuttle the plan, but Mr. Garodnick sees it as a way to foster a stronger one. "Indeed, there is no harm in having this proposal be initiated by the Bloomberg administration and finalized by the next mayor, whoever it may be, and for it be a shared legacy," Mr. Garodnick wrote. He argues that because the plan will be implemented until 2017, there is no need to rush the rezoning.

In a July 20 letter to the department, Community Board 5 mounted a similar case:

Given the enormous complexity and high stakes for this rezoning, we ask that the Department slow down its timetable so that the community can fully consider and respond to your plans and so that the Department can take the community's concerns and wishes into account, allowing time for town hall meetings, public hearings, and other forums. As a point of comparison, by its own account, the Department spent about five years to develop the plan for Hudson Yards, and just recently, the same amount of time to rezone a stretch of the Upper West Side. Closer to East Midtown, DOT and the Grand Central Partnership have spent nearly three years thus far to develop the plan for the Pershing Square pedestrian plaza. Certainly a project with the magnitude of East Midtown at least merits similar timetables.

There are those who believe the city is dragging its feet, however, namely Post real estate columnist Steve Cuozzo. He took to the tab's editorial pages today to slam the Midtown East plan from the other side. He said the city should not wait until 2017 to let developers build bigger. But his main issue is with a neighborhood improvement fund developers would finance by buying air rights: "The city wants the dough to remedy such horrible 'pedestrian realm challenges' as 'narrow sidewalks and bottlenecks in subway stations.' Hello, slush fund?"

“Hopefully, we’re going to change the way people consume,” he said, sitting at a table in Eataly, the Flatiron grocery store he opened in August 2010 in a partnership with Mario Batali, his mother, Lidia, and Italian businessman Oscar Farinetti. Before him was a plate of lentils and a glass of red wine. Asked about the rising price of food, he quickly fired off his reply in his distinctly outer-borough-bred baritone: “We’re going to change the balance of the plate. Less proteins, more carbs, more legumes, more rice, more barley. The era of cheap, abundant food is gone.”

He swirled his wine. “This is going to be a great article by the way, if you write it correctly,” he said. “The poorest people in the world eat this,” he said, tapping his plate with his fork. “And it’s delicious.”

The night before, Mr. Bastianich was on double-duty at the Fox network upfront party, helping both to cater the massive event and appear as one of the network’s stars (he’s a judge on MasterChef). And a moment after speaking with The Observer, he would embark on a rapid-fire wine tasting with an assistant, unleashing a fusillade of instructions at the young woman sitting across from him: “This is great. We could charge another two bucks for this. What else do you have for me?”

Pour, drink, spit.

“Let’s pull this one and wait another year.”

After that, he’d hop in a yellow cab (he owns the medallion and personally employs the driver) and head to JFK, then fly off to begin shooting the second season of the Italian version of MasterChef. Meanwhile, he’s somehow managing an empire of 18 restaurants—or more, depending on how you count them—scattered from New York to Pittsburgh, to Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and back, along with three Italian wineries. Then there are his three children, Olivia, Miles and Ethan, with his wife of 17 years, Deanna.

Amid all of that, he’s somehow found time to write a memoir.

Restaurant Man was sold to Viking at auction in October 2010 for an advance reported by New York to be somewhere between $680,000 and $710,000, no small take for a book from a guy who—while a veritable kingpin—isn’t exactly Molto Mario.

The memoir, which has rightfully earned comparisons to Anthony Bourdain’s seminal service industry tell-all Kitchen Confidential, is a dinner rush–paced sprint through the last 30 years of the restaurant industry in America. It follows a rise to prominence driven by—among other things—a distinctly Boomer-ish fear of not winding up richer than his parents.

The book is filled with borderline-misanthropic wisdom, offered up in a Scorsese-esque grumble. (“You’re just happy to know what people are stealing from you,” he writes at one point. “After that, it’s just how much you’re willing to tolerate.”) It is often enthralling, as when he extols the virtues of being a “cheap fuck,” including which vendors to pay last. And it is unapologetically direct—breaking down immigrant workers’ skill sets by nationality, for instance, and walking readers through the process of deciding whether to fire a manager. Restaurant Man is funny, often surprising, and if anything, illuminating. After all, Mr. Bastianich's track record speaks for itself, though his wisdom has proven somewhat abrasive for certain palates.

One anti-Bastianich critic described it as a “meltdown dressed as a memoir” and compared it to the rantings of a “street corner lunatic.”

“It’s a tough world out there,” Mr. Bastianich said, when it was suggested that his take seemed aggressively cynical. “It’s such a drag-your-knuckle, fuck-me-or-I’ll-fuck-you business, and then, you gotta put on a suit and get in the dining room every night to wine and dine, and see the power brokers of the world.”

During his post-lunch tasting, Bastianich asked the young woman pouring the wines if she’d read it.

“Some of it,” she said.

“Do you think I sound like a cynical lunatic?”

“Not really, but maybe that’s because I know you.”

Bastianich was born in Astoria and raised in Bayside, Queens, where he spent most of his formative years in his parents’ first restaurant, Buonavia, in Forest Hills. As a teenager at Fordham Prep, he watched his parents open Manhattan’s Felidia, as Lidia became a star in the food world (then, still a fairly obscure stripe of celebrity).

After graduating from Boston College in 1989, he did a quick stint on Wall Street as a bond trader. “I was doing capital markets, swaps, govies [government bonds], you know, that kind of stuff,” he explained.

It didn’t work out.

In the book, he describes the experience as being “like American Psycho without the chainsaws,” adding, “I didn’t want to be that guy, and I didn’t want to fuck clueless women.”

Leaving the Street with his bonus, he purchased a one-way ticket to Italy, where he bought a used VW Rabbit, embarking on what he calls an “intellectual journey” and “very primal, sensory trip” across Italy, sampling the local foodstuffs, terroirs and women. While the younger ones were comparable to the Virgin Mary, he writes, the divorcees were “giving it away.”

Bastianich’s preference for over-salted prose with four-letter words is prevalent; the book may as well be called Eat, Fuck, Profit. But his thorough understanding and appreciation for all things food—especially native Italian wine and cuisine—is passionate and eloquently conveyed.

On his return to New York, Mr. Bastianich opened up his first restaurant: Becco, in the Theater District, earning decent reviews. Soon, his mother introduced him to Mr. Batali, then the co-owner and chef of Po. Together they opened Babbo in 1998. The restaurant, which featured an offal-laden menu and a loud rock soundtrack, was a hit, and a three-star review from Ruth Reichl at The New York Times certified it. Since then, his empire has relentlessly metastasized.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Bastianich has won some detractors along the way, especially in recent years. One big hiccup occurred in November, when Mario Batali compared the evils of investment banking to those of Stalin and Hitler. He apologized, but not before sparking a Wall Street revolt, including a Twitter hashtag (#Bataligate), rumors of investment banks refusing to honor expensed lunches at Batali/Bastianich restaurants, and Bloomberg terminals categorizing all their eateries as “DON’T GO.” Despite his own unpleasant experience in finance, Mr. Bastianich (who raised money for Del Posto in part from “a couple of guys at Goldman”) is still defensive about the episode.

“That was Mario’s thing,” he said. “I really have nothing to do with that.” But isn’t Mr. Batali his business partner? “He’s entitled to his opinion. You know, whatever. Quite honestly, he was misquoted.” Even so, restaurants like Del Posto—which earned four stars in 2010, what Bastianich feels is one of the most important moments in his career—can’t risk alienating deep-pocketed patrons. Especially given the restaurant’s tumultuous history.

Del Posto was almost closed shortly after opening due to its lease changing hands. The new landlords—described by Mr. Bastianich as “the most unlikable fucking New York douchebag landlords ever” (page 206) and “pure fucking evil” (page 210)—served an eviction notice, claiming the partners had violated the lease agreement with unauthorized construction. Eater claimed it all went back to a pasta dinner the management refused to comp to the new owners.

The ensuing 18-month legal battle included a trip to State Supreme Court. Though he prevailed, Mr. Bastianich is still seething about the fight. In the book, he calls the opposing counsel, Warren Estis, “the fucking antichrist of landlord-tenant lawyers” (page 210), and describes the landlords’ PR advisor, Richard Rubenstein, as the “Hermann Göring of publicists” (also: page 210).

Recalling the dispute, Mr. Bastianich’s eyes glazed over, as if he were having a bad flashback. “I was fighting for my very life, for my 15-million-dollar investment,” he said. “We spent well over a million dollars fighting that shit.”

But it was the press war that stung the most. “The fact that you can buy that kind of ink in The Post ...” he said, trailing off.

The New York Post did go hard on Del Posto. Food critic Steve Cuozzo slammed the restaurant—in a filing that also took on its neighbor Morimoto—under the headline “Bum and Bummer.”

In the book, Mr. Bastianich addresses Mr. Cuozzo directly: “I just want to ask Steve, ‘Are you a real-estate reporter, a restaurant critic, or just plain fucking stupid?’”

Mr. Cuozzo responded in The Post, calling Bastianich “dumb” and a “lunatic,” asking if he remembered the episode incorrectly: “Did Mama Lidia beat him with a zabaglione whisk for the mess he made of Del Posto’s launch, when it was nearly evicted for violating its lease?”

He finished with the taunt: “Lidia, talk to your boy before he costs you real money.”

It was far from the only hostile reaction the book earned. In response to a passage about the time when Esquire’s food critic John Mariani, a “self-righteous, condescending prick,” berated him and “sliced my balls off tableside” over a bad meal, Mr. Mariani fired back through gossip items. He called Mr. Bastianich’s recollection of events “not just vile but so duplicitous that it’s difficult to imagine you are truly the son of your ever cordial, ever civilized parents.”

Regarding the backlash to the book’s more fiery passages, Mr. Bastianich initially claimed to be taken aback. “Quite frankly, it’s surprising to me,” he said.

He later admitted: “Oh, Mariani, yeah. I knew he’d freak out. I mean, whatever. It happened, it’s the truth. I don’t hate him.” Still, he said, “I wish they would leave my mom out of it. She is probably a kinder, more gentle person than I am, and she doesn’t deserve to be brought into this.”

Still, those dustups are fingerling potatoes compared to the labor lawsuits that have been filed against the company.

In 2010, a suit was brought alleging labor violations and demanding back pay. The original lawsuit—which started with only two Babbo employees and alleged that a percentage of wine sales was being deducted from the tip pool—was eventually expanded to a class-action suit against eight Batali/Bastianich restaurants in 2011, a few months after Mr. Bastianich called “bullshit” in the press (a line that was quoted in the judge’s decision to expand the suit to a class-action).

Initially, Mr. Bastianich told service industry gossip site Eater that “we’re going to fight this to every inch of the law, because we know we’re right” and later remarking to The Post that the suits were the work of “money-hungry lawyers” who were “shaking down the very foundation of Manhattan’s restaurant industry.”

One of the lawyers Mr. Bastianich was no doubt referring to was Maimon Kirschenbaum, who brought the suit against his company, and who has handled numerous such cases against many of the largest names in New York's service industry, winning more than $35 million in settlements.

“I don’t think it’s confidential that that guy doesn’t like me,” Mr. Kirschenbaum said in a phone call with The Observer. “I called him a thief.”

Mr. Kirschenbaum hasn’t read the new book, but when told of some of the opening passages, in which Mr. Bastianich explains the various ways in which employees can rip off their bosses, he quickly fired back. “I’m of the opposite mind,” he said. “Employees have to be incredibly suspicious of restaurateurs, because restaurateurs sort of believe that there are two groups of people. There’s the businessman and the employees, and you are the slave. So you should be happy with whatever I give you, and you should not be getting rich in my establishment.”

In the book, Mr. Bastianich plays both sides of the net, initially describing professional waiters as “generally overeducated, artistically deprived, bitter people who feel that every dollar they earn is blood money, and they resent being there” (page 95).

He then goes on to praise his own wait staff as “passionate” and “great,” explaining that “we create a positive work environment” (page 96) where he wants to “make them as much money as possible, and I want to educate them as much as I can” (Page 96). He also lays claim to “encouraging them to stay with us as long as they can” so they can become “part of the family.” This much is true: They have made partners out of former waiters, like Jason Denton, who started working for Batali at Po, and is now a restaurateur in his own right.

At the time of the waiters’ initial lawsuit, Bastianich explained: “We’re not going to let them shake us down for a quick settlement.” Only one of Bastianich’s pledge part proved true: The fight was by no means quick.

In March, almost two years after it was filed, the suit was settled for $5.25 million.

“Yeah, well,” Bastianich sighed, “I was wrong. I was wrong in that I didn’t have the resources or the time to fight this thing. I spent two years of my life fighting lawsuits when what I should really be doing is opening restaurants.”

Still, the concession had to hurt, no?

“Yeah, it hurts,” he said. “Five million is a lot of money.” At this, he put down his fork: “I can’t comment on this a lot because we signed those rights away,” he said. “But there is no justice in this, I can tell you that.”

Did he learn anything from the experience?

“I learned that I should shut the fuck up. And I learned to eat my words.”

When The Observer's conversation was wrapping up with Mr. Kirschbaum, we suggested that maybe he and Mr. Bastianich weren’t so different: They both come from immigrant parents. They both view the restaurant business as a fundamentally blue-collar profession, of servitude. And they are both sufficiently cynical to the point of misanthropy about the motivations of those they stand in opposition to.

“Look, my parents opened a restaurant, too,” he interjected. “It was a Kosher restaurant called Luvana. It was open for thirty-something years.” The restaurant, which was on 69th between Broadway and Columbus, wasn’t that far from Felidia. Did his parents ever have any problems with their waitstaff?

He pauses to think about this for a moment, and then, answers:

“Not that I know of.”

On the horizon for Mr. Bastianich is the third season of American MasterChef, and the second of the Italian MasterChef. Eataly is expanding to Los Angeles and Chicago. Two months ago, Babbo began lunch service. Lupa Osteria Romana recently received a one star review by The Times’ Eric Asimov, and they’ll want more. Del Posto’s challenge is to retain its four stars, while keeping the seats filled.

And there might be another New York restaurant on the way. In a heated moment during the labor dispute, Mr. Bastianich told The Post he was done opening restaurants here.

When asked if this was still the case, he turned to the publicist sitting with us: “Did I say that? Really?” he asked. She nodded.

“Fuck,” he said, admitting that a new local spot was “percolating,” after all.

He laughed. “I was just in a fit of rage,” he said. “Time heals, and life goes on.”

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

1 World Trade Center (Courtesy Getty Images)

The deal, if finalized, will be for the 42nd, 43rd, and 44th floors in the 104-story tower, a person familiar to the transaction confirmed to The Commercial Observer.

"Conde Nast had an option to expand and they told the Port Authority and the Durst Organization they were going ahead with it."

People at The Port Authority, CBRE and The Durst Organization all declined comment.

A spokeswoman for Conde Nast could not immediately comment on the deal.

Last year, Conde Nast, the publishers of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, signed a whopping $2 billion, 25-year lease at the 1,776-foot office tower.

UPDATE (5:07 p.m.):

A person familiar with the lease negotiations confirmed Conde Nast's latest proposed deal, adding that the publisher exercised an option to expand into those additional floors. The asking price for those floors is $75-per-square foot, the source said.

Once the deal is finalized, Conde Nast will have floors 20-44 in the building.

A Conde Nast spokeswoman sent in this statement to The Commercial Observer:

“We are exercising our option to take the maximum number of floors as stated in the original agreement, we are not taking additional space on top of that.”

drosen@observer.com

Should we tear down 285 Madison? (Property Shark)

The cause of the elevator accident at 285 Madison is still being investigated, and it looks like faulty maintenance may have been the cause. Not so for Post real estate sage Steve Cuozzo. He blames the city's bureaucracy for saddling us with outdated building stock.

If ever there was an argument for new commercial construction — despite whiners who venerate pre-World War II Manhattan — it’s the prevalence of lousy buildings like 285 Madison.

Office workers there told The Post they found its violations-prone elevators “creaky and scary.” No one yet knows whether the challenge of maintaining an 86-year-old building contributed to this week’s nightmare. But it’s a scary reminder that Manhattan’s office stock, engine of the state’s economy, is woefully dated compared with other world capitals.

Despite a handful of glamorous projects like One Bryant Park and One World Trade Center, very few new towers have been built here in recent decades — thanks to political and economic challenges that stunt development.

Old brick towers look romantic in Berenice Abbott’s 1930s nighttime photos, but they’re near-useless for today’s financial firms and “creative” enterprises.

It's an intriguing argument, one the Cuozz drives home by pointing out that New York has only built 10 million square feet of office space in the past decade, compared to 57 million square feet in the equally august London.

Could 3 Columbus be the answer? (NYC Architecture)

A lot of that has been built in formerly industrial areas like Canary Wharf, not in the heart of old commercial districts, like Madison Avenue. That is why Hudson Yards is getting off the ground, along with the rest of the West Side. That is why there is so much interest in the World Trade Center. That is why Downtown Brooklyn is even picking up some momentum.

Bringing down construction costs and finding new places to build—perhaps Long Island City deserves another look, or LoLo should become a reality—is the key, not destroying the historic fabric of the city. The cost of assembling such sites and clearing them is often prohibitive, and building new office space elsewhere could indeed open these older buildings to renovation (see: The Empire State Building) or residential conversion, which is very much in-demand in the city, as well.

After all, where is Y&R moving? Into a building originally built in 1928. It might not look it anymore, but it only took a little bit of work to make it work. With Y&R moving out, why not do the same at 285 Madison?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Making streets safe for the haters. (Chris Bernardo)

Dan Biederman, head of a half-dozen BIDs and civic organizations (one of the city's shadow mayors!) has been steadfast in his support of the re-engineering of midtown streets at the hands of the Bloomberg administration, even when it rankled many of his constituents. The passion shows in a brash, even scathing, interview with Streetsblog, where Mr. Biederman calls out a couple hacks.

He blames the powerful taxi lobby for its windshield perspective:

First, cab drivers are terrible participants in public fora. They don’t know shit because they’re on the phone all day long, yet they’re able to drive. The fact that they’re also, in their minds, better transportation analysts than people who went to school in that subject and have all kinds of citywide roles, baffles me. But the view of most business people is that you can count on cab drivers to tell you what the right answer is. I think that’s crazy. They will tell you that they’re annoyed that something isn’t going their way, but they don’t have the broader view.

And then he goes after the 100th Most Powerful Man in Real Estate:

If you can make [the landlords and developers] happy, all that will be left is the general concerns, as far as our district goes, about curb access, and I think two or three of those problems have disappeared. I don’t hear the Empire State Building squawking. Macy’s is satisfied because of the elimination of the Fifth to Sixth pedestrianization, although I never was 100 percent sure why that hurt their parade plans.So those are the five points that were left after all the shouting and hubbub. We don’t pay that much attention to Steve Cuozzo. I think he’s a great real estate reporter but he doesn’t know this field. He just loves to scream and rant about it.

The Observer has reached out to Mr. Cuozzo—who is most certainly not a hack, but we cannot say no to a good pun—for comment. If not here, it will hopefully turn up loud and proud in a forthcoming issue of the Post.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

"To stand at Church and Vesey streets," Cuozzo says, "is to witness a new Downtown being born."

After nearly a decade of false starts, delays, and general confusion, the city is finally beginning to see the emerging outline of the new World Trade Center. Cuozzo writes a quick rundown on the status of each project, and even manages to be positive--or at least restrained--about plans he previously criticized, saying that it's "too late to turn back" on the Transportation Hub (though he also calls the project "tortured"), and concedes that the surrounding trees soften the memorial's effect.

Cuozzo also spoke to critics who believe that the scope of the real estate project exceeds the demand for the space in a city that currently has a commercial vacancy rate of more than 10 percent. Following this logic, he argues, the Twin Towers should never have been built, as they took decades to fill. Of course, he also says that detractors are either jealous, defeatist or Twin Towers fanatics "for whom only restoration of the banal hulks would do."

From a real estate perspective, Cuozzo's argument makes sense. For the past several years, "Ground Zero" has described the rubble on which the Twin Towers once stood-and the site of impotent development plans, delays, and indecision. He seems to believe that with the area's reconstruction, the term will no longer apply to the location. It will refer to a prior state of flux in which we were still dealing with the tragedy of September 11 in some form or function. Since the project finally appears to be on track, we should let "Ground Zero" go.

For more general purposes, however, we would be doing the victims of September 11 a disservice in retiring the phrase. Developing projects may stand on the site, but the memory of what occurred there less than a decade ago remains. It is the only 9/11-specific phrase that applies to the location: "World Trade Center" described it before the tragedy, and will apply to the new buildings going forward. "Ground Zero" is the term that allows us to preserve, in daily language, the legacy of those who died.

Despite the site's reconstruction and bin Laden's death, 9/11 is still a source of grief for many; and the terrorist group that masterminded it, though reduced, still poses a threat to our country. The last people who truly occupied the site were those who were injured, killed, or in serious danger during the terrorist attack. The term ground Zero, though obsolete in terms of physical real estate, recalls a tragedy that is still too fresh to leave behind

realestate@observer.com

Even stoic Assembly Speaker and local rep Shelly Silver's got the jitters. "It goes without saying that ensuring the security of Lower Manhattan is critically important, but there has to be a balance between security and the very real need for access," Silver told Cuozzo. "Right now, there is a critical need for more transparency from the NYPD about their plans."

Cuozzo points to the lock-down atmosphere on Wall Street as an example, which, given its tourist-choked byways, could pose a nightmare of an entirely different sort--and probably one closer to what the World Trade Center site will really be like, at least if a visit to Century 21 is any indication.

Still, developers and local boosters are concerned that too-stiff security measures could make it that much harder to find new tenants for towers and stores, no matter how attractive downtown becomes.

It would be especially ironic, too, if the site became impenetrable. Not only was that one of the problems of its predecessor, but the new design was heralded for reconnecting the World Trade Center to the city by rebuilding Greenwich Street and bringing the plazas back down to street level. To go back on that now with a platoon of cops and security checkpoints would be a civic crime in itself.

In related news, Cuozzo reports that Larry Silverstein will not be going with Cushman & Wakefield, which is leasing out the Port Authority's 1 World Trade Center, as his broker. Instead, CB Richard Ellis is the likely lease-maker for his 4 World Trade Center, which just reached its seventh story.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

But here comes the Post's Steve Cuozzo to crash our party:

Manhattan's widespread, chronic store vacancies are far more numerous than in other major world cities and were so even before the financial crash two years ago. But the culture of self-congratulation in the retail-leasing industry is so entrenched, it's almost impossible to get an acknowledgement of how dysfunctional our retail climate can seem to even casual observers.

[...]

At many prominent locations, stores remain vacant for years, lending an air of defeat. Think of the Eighth Avenue side of the new Hearst tower; the former Times Square Theater on West 42nd Street, where Marc Ecko walked away from a deal after tying up the site for four years; and huge spaces in the Flatiron district that have stood dark seemingly forever.

REBNY counts 110 million square feet of Manhattan retail space. Yet -- strangely for a trade organization so statistically astute -- it doesn't cite a vacancy rate.

We'd guess that's at least 12 percent overall and far higher in certain parts of town -- astonishing in a city blessed with incalculably wealthy shoppers and probably the heaviest sidewalk traffic in the Western world.

When we talked to REBNY yesterday, VP Michael Slattery insisted that vacancies were less of a factor than one might think, and rents still show that Manhattan retailing may not be as bad as it could be.

But at the same time, Cuozzo points to the lack of similar issues in London, that perenial adversary nipping out our Yankee heels. Perhaps instead of patting ourselves on the back and pouring another round of drinks, it is time to get serious and solve this problem.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

You don't need a degree in architecture to hate the triangular mugging ground of "environmentally conscious landscaping, intimate seating areas" and a goofy, planted-roof subway entrance -- a "flexible open space" more conducive to hosting a Crips-Bloods scrimmage than the intended upscaling of the neighborhood.

So goes his appraisal of the new Atlantic Yards plaza unveiled yesterday. 

Now it's the Real Estate Desk's turn to play critic. Cuozzo may or may not know architecture, but he still doesn't know Brooklyn, as he repeats the oft-recited justification for the project: that it is at the heart of a blight-ridden corner of Brooklyn. Not, you know, the nexus of BroBoland: Park Slope, Fort Greene, and Prospect Heights, three of the chi-chi-est neighborhoods in the borough, if not the city.

Meanwhile, the Desk's colleagues, less dazzled by Ratner's new renderings, lept on the developer's acknowledgment that the entire Atlantic Yards project will take more than a decade to complete. From WNYC's Matt Schuerman, an ex-Observerite:

Developer Bruce Ratner said Tuesday morning what many of his critics and even some of his associates have been saying for years: there is no way the entire Atlantic Yards project will be done in 10 years.

He said the 10-year timeline was always misunderstood. It was never meant to be more than a best-case scenario to be used in environmental impact statements.

“That was really only an analysis as to what the most serious impacts [would be], if all the other planned development in downtown Brooklyn happened right away,” Ratner said. “It was never supposed to be the time we were supposed to build them in.”

He added: “I would say it's really market-dependent as to when it will really be completed.”

But the 10-year-timeline was also used by the city, state and Ratner’s own consultant to determine that the financial benefits to the public outweighed the roughly $300 million in direct subsidies the project is receiving. But the longer the construction schedule, the longer it will take the government to accumulate the benefits—in terms of income taxes from people who move into the complex, property taxes on the new buildings and other sources.

As always, Norman Oder has a complete round-up on the Atlantic Yards Report.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo