Wednesday: 'Embrace' Versus 'Abject Pessimism'

One Bryant Park: more glory!

• 'Embrace your inner co-op'--or so says today's Times business section. The gleeful mantra has something to do with an impending real estate crash, and so-called liars' mortgages, and Philip Hubert, and especially Eddie Murphy's SNL character Mr. White. Exactly. (New York Times)
• The $1 billion Bank of America Tower strikes again. Law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld will take six floors at the One Bryant Park building, which brings the 2.1 million-sf tower to a 90% occupancy. Akin Gump will move from their digs at 590 Madison Avenue, paying around $100 per foot for their 15-year deal. (Globe St.)
• Meanwhile, in housing: the chipper chief US economist at Moody's says we're all "underestimating the dark side." Thus when the smoke clears from the real estate bubble, our "euphoria could turn into abject pessimism very quickly." But what if we were never euphoric? (WSJ)
• Meaningless reason to be happy years from now: A 'pedestrian network' running from the Hudson River to the Financial District will be built by 2009. Work has already started, for some reason, on a 100-foot passage connecting the World Financial Center with Ground Zero. (NY1)
• New York has astronomical housing costs (see: euphoria), and so the state must "radically rethink its approach to land use, transportation and school finance." But is the solution state-wide reform, or those utopic little 'transit villages'? The latter. (New York Times)
• - Max Abelson