Either That Or Expand The Definition Of “City” To Include Wakefield, Tottenville, Bayside And East New York So No One Feels Left Out

Better to decamp to Jackson, Prospect or even Morris Heights than whoring every detail of your life for clicks, according to the person who started it all (by portraying someone who started it all):

Budding Carrie Bradshaws better think about moving to Queens, says “Sex and the City” icon Sarah Jessica Parker.

Manhattan is bracing for another influx of Blahnik-wearing career girls after the film is released May 30. But New York is “a really hard city, and it’s very expensive and it’s not what it used to be,” Parker told me at the Cinema Society and Linda Wells’ screening of her new film, “Smart People.”

“That’s why the outer boroughs are so desirable,” she said. “The outer boroughs are pretty sexy. It’s just a matter of time before they have their own shows.”

N. Y. Who?

Even though Manhattan just gets tweedier, speculating on a dorm strains credulity:

The city can legally deny developer Gregg Singer a permit to build a student dormitory in the East Village on the basis that he does not have an educational institution lined up to use the facility, the New York State Court of Appeals has ruled.

In the ruling yesterday, the court wrote that if the dormitory were completed and no school leased its space, the city would be unnecessarily forced to either allow Mr. Singer to use it for other purposes or require it to be torn down or left vacant. The 7–0 decision overturned a ruling by a lower appellate court.

The long-standing dispute involves the former home of P.S. 64, on East 9th Street between avenues B and C, which Mr. Singer purchased from the city in 1998 for $3.1 million.

Community groups protested the developer’s plans to build a 19-story student dorm on the site, saying it was an attempt to illegally build luxury housing. In 2004, the city’s Department of Buildings rejected Mr. Singer’s application to build the dormitory, saying the building needed to be affiliated with a specific academic institution beforehand. A state court upheld the city’s decision in 2006, but last year an appellate court sided with Mr. Singer. Yesterday’s decision, by the state’s highest court, reversed the 2007 ruling.

There Are Only Two Certainties In Real Estate: Eminent Domain And The Economy

Well, it’s a good thing they rushed to tear down all those people’s homes:

The slowing economy, weighed down by a widening credit crisis, is likely to delay the signature office tower and three residential buildings at the heart of the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, the developer said.

“It may hold up the office building,” the developer, Bruce C. Ratner, said in a recent interview. “And the bond market may slow the pace of the residential buildings.”

Mr. Ratner, chief executive of Forest City Ratner, did not specify the kinds of delays possible, but suggested that construction could be put off for years. His comments are his first public indication that the darkening economy has slowed the ambitious project, spanning 22 acres at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues.

The developer did say he was confident about starting construction on a $950 million basketball arena for the Nets by the end of the year. The arena was to be surrounded by the office tower, known as Miss Brooklyn, and three residential buildings in the first phase of the project.

But Mr. Ratner has yet to secure an anchor tenant for the Miss Brooklyn building, and now plans to phase in the residential buildings slowly.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

The Parks Department’s Version Of The Carnegie Hall Studio Towers

One way to get public school teachers to live in the community — let them dock their boats at Riverside Park:

Leslie Day flirted, dated, married, raised a family and found her life’s work in Manhattan — or rather, just off its shore.

Born on the Upper West Side, she moved to a 34-foot houseboat at the 79th Street Boat Basin when she was 30, single and a masseuse. She found her future husband, a biologist, on the 43-foot houseboat next door. After they were wed, they traded up to a 57-foot houseboat, and they raised a son. Now, as empty-nesters, the couple live on a 43-foot cruiser.

Dr. Day, 62, who is now an elementary school teacher, recently wrote “Field Guide to the Natural World of New York City.” When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg honored her book last fall in a ceremony at Gracie Mansion, he reached the part of his script that noted where she lived and ad-libbed a reaction she had heard many times. “Do you really?” he said. “That’s amazing. Thirty-two years and it never sunk or anything like that?”

Since 1937, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, the 79th Street Boat Basin has been an object of fascination off the island of Manhattan, part fishing village, part Monte Carlo and all floating opera all of the time.

The boat basin floats on five main docks on the banks of the Hudson River. For decades, there have been as many as 100 pleasure craft, some pristine, others slovenly — schooners, houseboats, yachts and trawlers — tethered just off the Riverside Park promenade, three blocks from Broadway and Zabar’s.

Critics have called the residents squatters on public property, in a high-end trailer park; even the city government, which owns the docks, has not always been comfortable with the arrangement.

But the boaters call themselves a community with rights like any other. Residents have ranged from millionaires to those between jobs. All seem to embrace self-expression. One man liked wearing a Superman sweatshirt as he bounced on a trampoline on the dock.

Location Scout: 79th Street Boat Basin.

For more on the Carnegie Hall squatters see here.

No Neighborhood Is An Island, Though Greenwich Village Tries

After being strong-armed out of Greenwich Village, NYU begins to look for other places to colonize:

New York University wants to build a 1-million-square-foot campus on Governors Island, school officials said yesterday.

The NYU plan would call for a mix of student and faculty housing and space for academic programs, officials said. It’s part of a 25-year, 6-million-square-foot expansion plan that also targets other parts of the Big Apple, including Downtown Brooklyn.

“NYU sees the potential of Governors Island as a place where we can grow,” said NYU spokesman John Beckman.

The state-city Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation says the university is a good fit, but the agency has yet to determine when it will seek proposals from prospective tenants.