Both the Carlyle and the Waldorf-Astoria are fully booked for the storm.

Brown Harris Stevens broker John Burger spent the better part of Sunday afternoon dashing from one listing to the next. He wasn't preparing them for a slew of Monday showings (although there were a handful still scheduled), but for Hurricane Sandy.

"I've been visiting all my unoccupied listings, making sure that everything is hunkered down and bringing planters and furniture in off the terrace," Mr. Burger told The Observer. "Those planters and outdoor objects become flying objects when a storm hits."

Mr. Burger said that he'd also been checked to make sure that all windows and doors were properly latched in the empty apartments. Although unlike the subway, showings were not stopping for the hurricane. As of Sunday evening, one of his listings on Fifth Avenue still had three showings scheduled for Monday, although so as not to leave out any buyers marooned in the country, they were postponing the sealed bids until Wednesday at 6 p.m.

As for the occupied listings, most of the owners had rushed back to Manhattan.

"People are, if anything, in the city," he noted.

Indeed, Manhattanites seem to prefer sitting out Sandy in apartments, townhouses and hotels. Even those passed the better part of the weekend at their country homes battening hatches and moving lawn furniture opted to drive back to the city before the hurricane struck.

"I just spent all day in the country. We were trying to decide, do we stay in the country or come back to the city. But in the country we were afraid we'd lose power, that there would be trees falling," said painter and Upper East Side social fixture Michelle Marie Heinemann, who left her Connecticut country home in the care of the two live-in caretakers before motoring back to the Upper East Side.

Ms. Heinemann told us that she been rushing around for the last two days, laying in extra cell phone batteries, food, candles, formula for the baby, buying games and coloring books to keep the children occupied, and gassing up the couple's four cars in case of emergency. She had also asked her laundress to come in yesterday to do all the washing. "I thought if she couldn't come in I'd be stuck," Ms. Heinemann said.

"I do feel safer here than in the country. The country is beautiful and we have a generator, but you never know and it's a big house," she said. "I'm totally prepared. I bought a ton of coffee and I have a lot of champagne here, so I know I'm stocked up."

Kirk Henckels, the executive vice president at Stribling, had also zipped back to the Upper East Side from Millbrook with his wife Fernanda Kellogg.

"I didn't want to be trapped outside the city," he said. "I'm not worried about losing power on the Upper East Side. I am worried about losing it in Millbrook."

Mr. Henckels said that he'd laid in a supply of food, movies and a couple of good books. He expected that most appointments would be canceled on Monday as at least one of the four people present at each would have a hard time making it, although life would most likely continue as always on the Upper East Side, with doormen and a skeleton building staff staying at the buildings for security purposes.

"I think there are going to be a lot of very soggy doormen who are asked to walk the dowager's poodles," he noted.

His colleague Elizabeth Ann Kivlan, the director of marketing and business development, had also just come back from the country after she finished securing her Connecticut home—dragging everything outside inside lest they become projectiles.

"I came back. I know the odds of me having power here are a lot higher. New York is a better place to ride it out. I'm in a town of 2,000 in Litchfield County."

Nor had Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Lisa Simonsen fled the city. "We're not going to leave, we're staying right here on Fifth Avenue," said Ms. Simonsen, adding that most of her friends were staying put as well. Even the nanny was coming into the city to stay with the family until to storm blew out to sea. Having taken care of all her preparations, she would wait, see, and hope for the best when it came to the family's home in Southhampton, which was, unfortunately, very close to the beach.

High ground is certainly an advantage in a hurricane—and most of Brown Harris Stevens broker Paula Del Nunzio's listings are on high ground. Not that showing them during a hurricane will be easy, Mr. Del Nunzio told us.

"I'm not sure how much I'll be able to do, but we do have some very die hard people who still want to see listings," she said.

In fact, even some people who don't have apartments in New York have packed their bags to wait out Sandy here. Both the Carlyle and the Waldorf-Astoria, along with just about every other hotel in the city, are booked full.

"The phones have been going nonstop since I came in at three," said Theresa Zimmerman, the Carlyle's front desk agent. Ms. Zimmerman said that guests had been arriving from Connecticut and Long Island, as well as from other parts of New York City, particularly Lower Manhattan and Tribeca. She had also seen more than a few refugees from glass highrises, wary of the combination of high winds and high floors. All hotels are required to have generators, she told us, so guests are not only assured of room service and fresh linens, but also electricity. (Staff are staying at the hotel to guarantee five-star service even if the subways remain down for several days).

The Waldorf-Astoria was also full Sunday night, with evacuated New Yorkers, grounded travelers and wealthy New Yorkers who'd decided that they'd rather not spend their time hoarding food and other supplies. The restaurant in the hotel would stay open no matter what, we were told.

"Generally, a hotel is the best place to be in a storm," the man at the front desk told us. "We have food supplies for a week."

Food and a staff to cook it. Certainly beats stale bread and canned soup.

kvelsey@observer.com

According to sources present at a Zoning Committee hearing today regarding Columbia University's plan to expand their athletic facilities in Inwood, Jackson said that Washington Heights City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez and State Senator Adriano Espaillat have been "poisoining the process" by meeting with constituents directly and rebuffing Jackson's efforts to work together.

Jackson said that the duo were telling neighborhood residents that he was "anti-Dominican." Rodriguez accused Jackson of telling university officials not to meet with any other elected officials other than him.

"If you have something to say, say it to my face," Jackson said to Rodriguez, according to one council member who witnessed the exchange.

Both Rodriguez and Jackson represent the area where the project would be situated, but it is actually on Jackson's side of the district line.

According to a source who witnessed the exchange, Rodriguez shot back that the district line was irrelevant, since the issue affects the entire community.

"It's not the minor leagues, it's the major leagues," Rodriguez said.

The two had to be quieted by Council Land Use Committee chairman Leroy Comrie, who suggested that the conversation should occur elsewhere.

The dispute between Jackson and Rodriguez dates from at least last year when Jackson surprised many by supporting Mark Levine, a local district leader, in the campaign to replace Eric Schneiderman in the State Senate. Schneiderman's district is historically one of the most Dominican voting districts in the country, and most of the uptown political establishment lined up behind Espaillat, who is a close ally of Rodriguez's. 

Espaillat went on to win by a double-digit margin.

"It's a turf war and it's not the first one they had," said one Council member who attended the hearing. "I have never seen people go at each other like this in a Council hearing and make it personal."

• So far, there were 54 townhouses (one- to four-family homes) sold in 2010, compared to a high of 57 in 2007, though more could still hit public records in the coming weeks or months, possibly setting a new record.
• Prices for townhouses fell farther and faster than for condos or coops in the past few years, but they have also rebounded faster.
• The median sales price was $7.63 million, compared to $7.9 million in 2007.
• The Upper East Side still had the most sales, but the Upper West Side is catching up in terms of price. 
• Meanwhile, the record for most expensive West Side townhouse, set in 2007 with a $15.75 million purchase on Riverside Drive, was broken twice this year, with a $19.4 million sale
• Looking for a bargain? Townhouses in Greenwich Village and Harlem have not seen the rebound that their uptown neighbors have.
• There were only two trophy sales (those more than $20 million) in 2010: the Duke Semens Mansion and 20 North Moore Street. (Both were also in the Top 10 for sales last year). This is compared to six in 2007 and eight in 2008.

Now if only they could figure out what to do about those nasty narrow townhouses.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

"It was a shocking decision, even with the chance of the court taking the case being 1 percent," Sprayregen told The Observer by phone today. He was referring to the odds that all cases face in being heard by the court, though he believed his had a good chance, both on merit and import, given the particulars of his suit and the dearth of opinions from the high court since it decided the landmark Kelo case five years ago, which basically rewrote the rules around eminent domain.

"I thought we've put together, in terms of facts, about the strongest case anyone could," Sprayregen continued. "What the state and Columbia have done to collude on this is horrifying. We really thought they'd take a look at this. It strikes fear in me for others about how anyone else could put together a stronger case. We spent six years on this. How anyone else will mount a stronger challenge to eminent domain, I don't know."

Sprayregen owns four storage facilities in the footprint of Columbia's planned Manhattanville campus, which he says the university has never offered to buy, trying to coerce him into a deal instead. Along with the owners of a gas station located within the project, Sprayregen sued. Given the state's considerably broad eminent domain powers -- libertarian groups rank New York as one of the worst states in terms of eminent domain abuse -- and given the failure of Atlantic Yards opponents to challenge that project in court, the Columbia case seemed like a long shot.

That was until last December, when a state court made a surprising ruling that the state and Columbia had improperly worked together to craft a plan with limited public benefit. That was overturned in the summer, and "the narrative returned to its expected track," as The Observer wrote at the time. The state was once again in the driver's seat with Sprayregen banking on the whims of the judiciary.

The Supreme Court does not issue opinions when it declines to hear a case, so it is unknown whether this was simply another casualty of a selective docket or a matter the justices simply had no interest in addressing. After all, 43 states -- New York not among them -- have overhauled or altered their eminent domain statutes since the Kelo decision. Perhaps the justices, as has been the case time and again for the Atlantic Yards suits, believe this is a matter to be decided by the legislatures of the land, and not the courts.

Sprayregen believes this was the wrong decision, and it has set a precedent that will make it even harder to challenge eminent domain in the future. "This is what the courts are there for, to stand up for people's rights, to protect the minority against the majority," he said. He called the eminent domain issue insidious, that, unlike abortion, the threat is invisible until it is too late. "This opens the floodgates in a way we may not yet appreciate. Who knows what could happen in the coming years and decades?"

Sprayregen said he and his legal team are exploring their options, but those seem to be limited at the moment.

Columbia declined to discuss the case -- the state, not the university, is the defendent -- though university president Lee Bollinger did release a statement that said, in part: "We look forward to continuing our progress on this long-term plan that will help upper Manhattan remain a global center of new knowledge and create new jobs for New Yorkers over the coming years."

The Empire State Development Corporation, which helped Columbia prepare the project and was the party being sued by Sprayregen, had this to say:

ESDC is pleased that the petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court that was filed by opponents of the Columbia Manhattanville project has been denied and that the New York Court of Appeals decision stands. This victory represents a significant step toward achieving the many goals of the project, including strengthening New York as an international center for premier education and academic research programs, improving facilities and infrastructure within the footprint and the surrounding community, generating thousands of jobs for New Yorkers and creating much-needed open space in the neighborhood.

Looks like the West Harlem rezoning is arriving just in time.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

But instead of having backers with names like Zeckendorf, Trump or even Padeh, these $20 million new-construction and conversion projects—like the one going up at Seventh Avenue and 127th Street—are being built by outfits like NYC Designs Inc., the Poko Partners and Mann Realty. A $27 million conversion at 1890   Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard at 114th Street, for example, is slated to be built by something called Tahl Propp Equities. 
“I don’t want to call it a gold rush, but there are a lot of young, small-name firms taking cracks up there all over the place,” said Trevor Stahelski, the impossibly young and successful partner at Cardinal Investments. “The dirt is cheap, and it’s in Manhattan. It has the Manhattan neighborhood structure that you have in other parts of the city: colleges, hospitals, transportation.”      
It is exactly this marriage of relatively inexpensive land prices and a Manhattan address that is bringing more real-estate savvy developers and buyers to neighborhoods above the park.   
Mr. Stahelski, whose project at 245 West 115th Street is already sold-out (“We’re done!”), thinks the reason the area is attracting a slew of unseasoned developers is evident: “You can take a little more risk and be a little farther away from established areas and be a pioneer in gentrifying neighborhoods; it’s really a simple strategy.
“We look for opportunity, balance the risk by staying in Manhattan in neighborhoods that are getting safer—it’s gentrification,” Mr. Stahelski explained.   
And what kinds of buyers are hoping to take advantage of lots of space, easy access to public transportation, good Manhattan schools and safer streets? 
Yup, you guessed it—families. 
“I think our buyers are almost exclusively coming from the Upper East and Upper West Sides,” They are comfortable up there, they have kids and they know there are good schools around,” said Gary Davis, executive vice president of development at the Athena Group. That firm’s 111 Central Park North (the marketers’ moniker for 110th   Street) is already over 70 percent sold. 
Mr. Davis cited a couple other factors drawing folks to the area: “Retail is following the residential. There is great light in the air, since zoning restrictions are very strong, so buildings won’t get too tall.”   
The perfect height, some might say, for a new developer.