In This Week's Observer...

Sitt Buckles Into Coney Rollercoaster "Joe Sitt, a 42-year-old developer who has bought up Coney Island's core, got stung a few weeks ago. The city's planning director, Amanda Burden, knocked the economic engine that's supposed to drive the whole thing--condominiums--months before the official rezoning process had even begun." Go to story by Matthew Schuerman. Stuy Town's So Last Year: Quinn, Speyers Make Nice "Six months ago, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and real-estate powerhouse Tishman Speyer stood on opposite sides of the bidding battle for Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. Despite Tishman Speyer's triumph and Ms. Quinn's only cautious support of the sale, it appears the two are cozying up. Since January, Rob Speyer, the 37-year-old managing director of Tishman Speyer, has quietly rounded up $22,275 in contributions for Christine Quinn's likely 2009 mayoral run." Go to story by Mark Wellborn and John Koblin. George Lives! Eccentric Economists Toast the Single-Tax Solution "Joshua Vincent remembers the day in 1979 he became a Georgist. 'I was at Oberlin College, and I was a socialist--I loved communism,' Mr. Vincent said on a recent evening. 'I could not wait for the day when all the rich would have their money taken and given to the poor.'" Go to story by Tom Acitelli. Jack the Ripper Doesn't Work Here Any More "Has Donald R. Finley lost his eerie edge? Or is the founder of the Jekyll & Hyde Entertainment Group just fronting a mild-mannered alter ego? His touristy Jekyll & Hyde-themed restaurants, with locations in midtown and the West Village, offer a kookier than spooky special-effects-filled experience not unlike Walt Disney World's Haunted Mansion amusement ride, only with chicken fingers and fried calamari. How bizarre, then, that Mr. Finley's newest Manhattan eatery drops the creep-show shtick, altogether." Go to Counter Espionage by Chris Shott. SL Green Dreams Grand Central With $76 M. Midtown Buy "The mega-developer SL Green can now build a 900,000-square-foot tower at the foot of Grand Central Terminal. This comes after SL Green purchased two small buildings, one at 331 Madison Avenue and the other at 48 East 43rd Street, for $76 million. SL Green owns a neighboring building on the block at 317 Madison Avenue." Thomas Pink muscles onto Wall Street "The upmarket men's clothier Thomas Pink is moving downtown. Pink has landed a ground-floor lease at 63 Wall Street for just under 4,000 square feet, a broker involved in the deal confirmed." Go to Commercial Breaks by John Koblin. Brokaw Buys Barbara Epstein's Artists Haven for $3.26 M. "Godly-voiced newsman Tom Brokaw has bought the duplex apartment that belonged to the godly Barbara Epstein for over half a century. The co-op, at 33 West 67th Street, sold for $3,267,650. At the apartment's dinner table, back in 1962, Ms. Epstein invented The New York Review of Books Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick and then-husband Jason Epstein." Video-Gamer Has $6.25 M. for Soho Penthouse "Dan Houser, a pioneer of splendidly violent video games, has paid $6.25 million for a high-tech duplex penthouse at 20 Greene Street. According to city records, the seller is Charles Ferguson, who sold his firm Vermeer Technologies to Microsoft for $130 million before becoming a documentary filmmaker." Go to Manhattan Transfers by Max Abelson. Quietly, Midtown Asserts Its Dominance "All of the most expensive recent Manhattan office leases have been in midtown, not in downtown (or anywhere else in the borough, for that matter). In 2006, according to the brokerage Cushman & Wakefield, companies and landlords signed 43 office leases where the rent was at least $100 a square foot--every last one in midtown. So far in 2007, companies and landlords have inked a dozen $100-or-more-a-foot leases--again, all in midtown. This puts 2007 on a breakneck pace to smash last year's record of 43." Go to The Lab by Tom Acitelli. The Broker Hillary Clinton Calls "Kathy Sloane says Manhattan's got 10 top brokers, and she would know; Redford, Clinton, the Donald, Diane Sawyer--she's worked with them all." Go to The Sit-Down by Max Abelson. Amass Appeal "At least a hundred brooms and mops hang from the ceiling of what would, under other circumstances, be the living room of Byron and Susan Bell's 1,500-square-foot 1876 Chelsea townhouse. That room isn't far from five others full of thousands of baskets, pots, mousetraps, locks, toys, tools and hats--all, by the way, very tidy and in perfect aesthetic order. What to make of it all?" Go to Interiors by Toni Schlesinger. Deeds and Deals A Week In New York Real Estate