In 2009, you may or may not remember, the City Council nixed the Kingsbridge Armory mall project in the Bronx. The developers of the project were to receive $50 million in exemptions and tax credits—but the Council, after much argument, knocked it down, because neither the developer nor the future mall tenants would agree to pay workers a minimum of $10 an hour. ($10 an hour is basically $21,000 a year, by the way, before taxes are withheld.) READ MORE

The Center for Urban Real Estate of the Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation sounds like such a refined academic institution! But apparently it's pretty much the Heritage Foundation of land use. The direct of the "Center" (funded in part by your developing friends at the Durst Organization!) is a former executive vice president at your friendly local developer the Related Companies, where he still consults. (Just to pick one: guess who's responsible for the disgusting Gwathmey building on Astor Place? Yes.) And so this oh-so-objective piece in the Times on the Center and, I paraphrase, "wouldn't it be hilarious if they connected Governors Island to Manhattan with a landfill bridge" and "wouldn't it be neat if they rezoned to basically do away with the guiding principles of air rights in Manhattan," is an exceptional launching pad for the Center's pro-developer "ideas." All this is cast as how it would make the City money. (Landfilling around Governors Island would "generate $16.7 billion in revenue for the city" over 20 to 30 years is their claim.) This would be the next Westway if it wasn't pretty much obviously untenable. Points for dreaming big (business) though!

I've never seen a more bald admission that the big New York newspaper is for and about white, well-off people, even as it acknowledges that this is so. "There have always been, and will always be, barriers in real estate, lines that certain buyers will not cross.... But as people of means continue to crowd the city, those lines have been shifting." READ MORE

It's a nicer kind of day when a man finally gets to write about one of his decades-long obsessions. In this case: Gay Talese and 206 E. 63rd Street (New Yorker, subscription only), the site of at least a dozen failed restaurants, and, for now, at least, the story of the address has an ending. The doomed building is being (inexplicably) purchased by a 77-year-old Buddhist monk, to be used as a monastery. (Presumably the former panhandler turned purveyor of meditation temples has met with fluidity along the way, as the purchase price of the building was $5.6 million.)

• "We are a house of makers, doers, and artists. One of us is an installation artist, another is a writer and hot rock singer, one is a printmaker, one is a southern fashion designer, one does special effects makeup." READ MORE

The bad boys who gave much of 20th century American literature its “muscular, glamorous aura,” as one of their daughters, Alexandra Styron, puts it, are beginning to fade from view. So it's worth sitting up to take note of the fact that the Brooklyn lair of the one you might call the lion king, Norman Mailer, is up for sale. Following the death of his widow, Norris Church Mailer, the nine Mailer children are listing the top-floor apartment at 142 Columbia Heights for $2.5 million. The broker, Dolores Grant of Corcoran, tells the Times that the place does not lend itself to easy comparisons, and perhaps she speaks more truth than she knows. READ MORE

In today's most shocking media news: "Publishing giant Conde Nast is likely to finalize its 1 million-square-foot lease at One World Trade Center by March, developer Douglas Durst told Crain's today." One meeeeeelllion square feet! God, they must be getting an amazing rate, given how much, oh, everyone who works at Condé Nast despises the idea. They would become only the second tenant to sign up for the World Trade Center (though they claim, with this and other current interest, they'd have 85% leased), which will be completed sometime when our grandchildren will care. (Presumably there will still be magazines in that future.)

So some folks in Chicago are attempting to derail Rahm Emanuel's campaign for mayor of that city by challenging his residency. Emanuel testified before the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners today that " he left behind his family's 'most valuable possessions' at his Chicago home, showing he always intended to move back." But there are other problems. READ MORE