$150 Million Could Fund Tenafly’s Budget Needs For Six Years

But I guess you have a better view at 15 CPW:

Remember that rumored $90 million listing at 15 Central Park West? It was nothing.

Dolly Lenz, New York City’s most gargantuan real estate agent, broke astounding news at Portofio’s Four Seasons get-together this morning: “There are a few apartments on the market at 15 CPW, a new development on Central Park West, asking somewhere between $80 and $125 million — three different apartments — and one quietly on the market at $150 million,” she said.

Wowzah. Brokers have already made it known that two condos in the Robert A.M. Stern-designed blockbuster building are being offered at $80 and $90 million, so Ms. Lenz’s quote not only means that there’s a third apartment on the market in the building for somewhere between $80 and $125 million, but that there’s a fourth spread whose owner wants $150 million.

That would be more than any single-family residential property in New York City has ever asked for.

See also: Borough of Tenafly, New Jersey 2008 Municipal Budget.

Slow News Day

This just in — U.N. diplomats still haven’t paid their parking tickets:

More than a decade after Mayor Rudy Giuliani declared war on diplomatic scofflaws over unpaid parking tickets, the city is still owed more than $18 million, leaving many New Yorkers enraged.

“They should pay,” said Carmen Mercer, 35, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, standing outside a midtown DMV office. “Everybody else has to pay. It comes with the responsibility of having a car.”

Deadbeat nations are clearly in no rush to pay off their debts, the vast majority of which were incurred before a 2002 agreement provided more parking spaces for them. That deal has cut the number of new tickets issued by 94 percent and helped lower the total owed to the city from more than $21 million.

Nevertheless, the total owed has been stuck at $18 million since at least 2005. Some 175 countries are to blame for the missing pot of money, with Egypt and Kuwait leading the list of offenders.

After all, $18 million could be used to build one-tenth of the High Line:

City officials and the Friends of the High Line presented the final design on Wednesday for the first phase of the High Line, the $170 million park that is under construction on the West Side of Manhattan and has been called one of New York City’s more distinctive public projects.

The park, modeled loosely on the Promenade Plantée in Paris, is being built on a 1.45-mile elevated freight rail structure that stretches 22 blocks, from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street, near the Hudson River. The rail structure, built to support two fully loaded freight trains, was built from 1929 to 1934 when the West Side was a freight-transportation hub, but has been unused for decades. The tracks are 30 to 60 feet wide and 18 to 30 feet above the ground.

Ground was broken in April 2006. Over the past two years, crews have been constructing the first, $85 million segment of the 6.7-acre park, which is estimated to cost $170 million and is financed by federal, city and private money.

Location Scout: UN, High Line.

I Don’t Think That Worked In The Movies, Either

Next time you’re escaping the police and some buttinsky, keep in mind that this ploy does not seem to work:

The pajama-clad super of a ritzy lower Manhattan high-rise chased a burglar but was mistakenly grabbed by security guards when the wily thief screamed for help, police sources said.

“The guy was yelling at no one in particular, ‘Stop this crazy guy. He’s trying to kill me!'” said super Bobby Gardocki, who admitted he looked somewhat bizarre running barefoot in his jammies after the burglar Saturday night.

Gardocki was grabbed by Manhattan Community College police, who thought he was the culprit.

A building tenant convinced the guards they had the wrong guy and cops arrested the suspect, Michael Estrada, 38, of Queens, nearby.

He allegedly looted a woman’s apartment of more than $3,000 in jewelry before trying to get into the super’s flat.

How To Reduce Traffic Congestion?

Close off five miles of a major north-south artery. I guess he was never that serious about the issue after all:

A five-mile stretch of road running from Lower Manhattan to Central Park will be closed to automobiles for three days in August, as part of a city Department of Transportation program that, if successful, could lead to regular street closings.

The proposal, expected to be announced by Mr. Bloomberg at an event today, is intended to provide New Yorkers and visitors with a safe place to jog, stroll, and ride without the congestion normally associated with the city’s streets. The car-free zone will run from the start of Centre Street in Lower Manhattan to 72nd Street on the Upper East Side by way of Lafayette Street, Fourth Avenue, and Park Avenue, and it will be closed between 7 a.m. and 1 p.m. on three consecutive Saturdays: August 9, August 16, and August 23.

But while the plan is intended to accommodate residents, some fear that, even on a weekend, the toll on businesses will be higher than the value gained.

The owner of Elan, an antique furniture store on Lafayette Street, Jeff Greenberg, 55, called the street closing “a horrible nightmare.”

“There’s no doubt that it will affect my business negatively,” Mr. Greenberg said in an interview yesterday.

In addition to his concern that customers would not come without cars, he said the only way to load furniture into his store was through the front entrance on Lafayette Street, which would be impossible during a road closing.

“They’ve got to be kidding,” the manager and owner of the League of Mutual Taxi Owners, Vincent Capone, said. “It’s getting harder and harder for a cab driver to be out there making a living with all these traffic rules.”

Instead of closing off Manhattan streets, Mr. Capone suggested organizing an event in nearby Central Park or in Brooklyn. “This is New York, this is Manhattan,” he said. “We’re not in the middle of a forest somewhere.”

Historical Reenactors Return To East Village For Summer Tourism Season

For in ye olde timey times, the locals once hoisted placards railing against “yuppie scum”:

Among the seasonal developments that signal the approach of summer in New York City are the ascent of lifeguards into wooden chairs on Rockaway Beach, the appearance of seersucker suits in Madison Avenue store windows and the formation of long waiting lines for tickets to Shakespeare in the Park.

But in the East Village, where people commonly sunbathe on tar-paper roofs, black leather is in season year-round and the street theater is always free, the calendar change is observed in other ways, with soap box speak-outs, self-organized street demonstrations and parades — usually against gentrification and its perceived agents.

And so it was that Friday night signified the opening of the East Village summer social season as 100 people gathered on East First Street to protest what they said was the sterilization and overdevelopment of the Bowery and the nearby streets, once one of the seedier districts in the city.

“This is the biggest crowd I’ve seen in a while,” said Jerry Wade, a veteran of many East Village demonstrations. “We used to have things like this all the time.”

John Penley, a local photographer, organized the event and advertised it as a “protest march against real estate developers, landlords, yuppie wine bars and Republicans.”

The starting point was the Bowery Wine Company, a sleek bar partly owned by Bruce Willis, which has been a meeting place for a Republican club. It stands just a few hundred feet from where CBGB, the renowned punk rock club, operated for 33 years before closing in 2006 after a dispute with its landlord.

The wine bar opened in March inside the recently built Avalon Bowery development, which takes up almost an entire block, including the former site of an abandoned schoolhouse that was used for years as a studio by monks who practiced martial arts. Later, squatters stayed there, referring to it as the Kung Fu Castle.