National Geographic

Aspirational magazine publisher Conde Nast has signed the long-awaited deal to assume over one million square feet of office space in One World Trade Center, which when completed will be the tallest skyscraper in the nation.

The lease marked the largest single tenant to be brought into Lower Manhattan in years. The project is being developed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which sold an ownership stake to the Durst Organization. “We hope Condé Nast, at long last united into a single building, will be the catalyst for the rebirth of the downtown area,” Newhouse told a crowd of reporters and elected officials standing in the bare concrete, window-clad floor of the tower — one of the floors being leased by his company.

Such an act takes a major load off the back of the Port Authority, which is seeking to lease up a building that comes with a long list of challenges. One World Trade Center is surely worth far less that it costs to build (the tower was valued last year at $2 billion, while its construction price tag is over $3 billion). It undeniably causes anxiety over future terrorism among potential tenants. At present, there is just one other private tenant, for 190,000 square feet, signed on to the 2.6 million-square-foot building.

Thousands of clackers are surely sobbing in their Times Square cubes. Quick, somebody get three thousand feet of velvet rope to Ground Zero, stat!

The residents of an Upper West Side condo tower have voted to ban smoking in their building, even if the unit owner has been doing so for years. It's the city's first such retroactive ban in a residential building.

Even smokers who moved into the building, the Ariel West, before the ban must abide by it. The building is one of the first in the city to approve such an extensive ban. (Several rental buildings introduced bans last year, but established tenants who smoked were not affected.) Owners in the building, a 32-story glass tower at Broadway and 99th Street, voted 47 to 3 to approve the ban late last month. There are 68 owners in total; 46 votes constituted the supermajority required to change the bylaws. “Even though people bought into this building thinking they could smoke,” said Gideon Stein, the president of the condo board at Ariel West, “people do not have a constitutional right to smoke.”

Enforcement of the ban will be performed by busybody old ladies, who will prowl the halls sniffing out infractions.

Inspired by the space-saving furniture on yachts, a Barcelona man turned his 250 square feet apartment into a "Lego-style" living space.

After buying a new condo, a San Francisco man is upset because he wasn't warned in advance that his downstairs neighbor is into noisy leather sex. And now he can't let his ten year-old son move in.

Hagerty said all was well until he announced that he intended to remove the carpet and padding in his unit to help with allergies. The downstairs condo owner explained in an April 24 e-mail that he opposed the idea. "I am a sexual enthusiast and enjoy leather sex," the man wrote. "At times, it is possible and even likely that the sounds of leather sex will be coming from my bedrooms to your bedrooms without an effective sound barrier. While it is not my issue, you may find you need to explain things to your son as it could be confusing to him since it frequently doesn't sound as pleasurable as it is." "I just don't think it is appropriate for my son to bear witness to that," Hagerty said. But the neighbor says if Hagerty just left the carpet and pad on the floor everything would be fine. "My lifestyle shouldn't have anything to do with this," he said. "I could be singing Chinese opera in my bedroom."

The realtor who worked on the sale says he had no responsibility to disclose the sexual habits or noisiness of neighbors.

According to a real estate study quoted by Gothamist today, it makes more financial sense to rent in New York City: "The median list price (for the top 50 cities) is $140,201.37, but the median price for a 2-bedroom apartment in NYC is $1.3-1.4 million! Median rent (for the top 50 cities) is $1,871.65, but it's $3500-4000 in NYC for a 2-bedroom apartment." Commenters on the above-linked story complain that the study only looked at Manhattan. A lengthy breakdown by city is at the link.