From left: Marion Jones and David Schechtman of Eastern Consolidated and 701 West 135th Street

A free-standing retail building near Columbia University’s developing Manhattanville campus has hit the market for $11 million, according to Eastern Consolidated, which is the exclusive listing agent for the property.

The 18,200-square-foot, rectangular building at 701 West 135th Street currently yields more than $400,000 in annual income from current leases, according to the listing, with one retail suite still vacant. Alternatively, the two in-place leases each contain terms to provide for vacant delivery by summer 2012.

“It’s an absolutely phenomenal opportunity to reposition a 20,000-square-foot building in a proven retail strip,” said Marion Jones, a director at Eastern, who shares the listing with colleague David Schechtman. – Katherine Clarke [more]

From left: Columbia President Lee Bollinger and renderings of Columbia’s changes on West 129th and West 130th streets

Columbia University submitted its own plans for a tech campus to the city, and like New York University it’s not interested in the Roosevelt Island site Cornell and Stanford covet. DNAinfo reported that the school wants to use the city’s promised $100 million infrastructure grant to expand its footprint into West Harlem.

The proposal calls for an Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering to eventually occupy three buildings and more than 1.1 million square feet in the $6 billion Manhattanville campus rising in West Harlem. The school would accommodate 2,500 graduate students and 167 faculty members. [more]

New York skyline and Hong Kong skyline

Even as homebuyers from Asia flock to the city, Asian cityscapes could also serve as an example for New York City, New York Magazine reported in an article.

Brooklyn and Queens are not dense enough and have too much blue sky, Vishaan Chakrabarti, a former employee of Related Companies and now in charge of the real estate program at Columbia University, said. If there were fewer one- and two-story buildings and more “vertical cities,” he said, it would help to discourage automobile use, conserve energy and push more residents onto the subway. He noted that Hong Kong’s transit corporation MTR made a fortune by building skyscrapers on landfill and then building out rail lines to serve those developments. [more]

From the South Florida website: Tuesday was the first chance for brokers to take a look at the new $59 million Kluge mansion in Palm Beach that was recently put on the market by listing brokers Paulette and Dana Koch and Carol Diggs and Carole Hogan of Brown Harris Stevens.The Real Deal was on the scene to take a look at the 21,000-square-foot home, which was owned by John Kluge, a Columbia University alumnus and once ranked by Forbes as the wealthiest person in the world. (See photos by Amy Ramirez after the jump) Kluge willed the property to Columbia University upon his death last year. – Alexander Britell [more]

From the South Florida website: Casa Sin Nombre, the famed Palm Beach estate that Metromedia founder John Kluge willed to Columbia University upon his death last year, has hit the market for $59 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Kluge, a Columbia alum and once the Forbes-ranked wealthiest individual in the world, acquired the four-acre, oceanfront compound over the course of three decades, ultimately compiling five lots with upwards of 21,000 square feet of living space, including a 12,000-square-foot main garden house, a 6,000-square-foot oceanfront home designed by architect Addison Mizner, and three other staff and guest homes. [more]

Columbia University has scaled back plans for a new public school that it had promised to build as part of its new Manhattanville campus, inciting the ire of a community already on edge about the invasion of the university’s construction crews. According to the Daily News, Teachers College Elementary had been slated to open in the fall as a pre-kindergarten-through-eighth grade school, but Columbia officials said last week that they have not been able to find a large enough space to house it, and will consequently only be able to accommodate kindergarten through fifth grade. What’s more, the first year of the school’s existence will be tried out across town in East Harlem, rather than the neighborhood it was actually intended to serve. [more]

Upwards of 50 of protesters gathered outside Columbia University’s employment center yesterday evening, alleging that the university hasn’t lived up to its promise to create jobs as part of its $6.3 billion Manhattanville expansion, according to DNAinfo. As The Real Deal reported earlier this week, the Coalition to Preserve Community claims that it’s been repeatedly rebuffed in its efforts to obtain employment statistics from the employment center, which opened five years ago near the expansion site. [more]

Columbia University

A local activist group is planning to gather outside Columbia University’s Morningside Heights campus tomorrow evening to protest the university’s $6.3 billion expansion plan, putting officials on the defensive.

“Hey Columbia, where are the jobs?” taunted a statement by the Coalition to Preserve Community sent to members of the press this morning. The group alleges that Columbia, which in December received the U.S. Supreme Court’s green light to proceed with construction at its 17-acre Manhattanville site, had falsely touted the creation of 7,000 jobs in order to get the plan approved. But now that construction has begun, the CPC says it’s been repeatedly rebuffed in its efforts to obtain employment statistics from the Columbia University Employment Information Center, which opened five years ago near the expansion site.

In a statement provided to The Real Deal, a Columbia spokesperson said the university has hired 900 local residents for full-time, part-time and temporary positions since the employment center opened. [more]

President Barack Obama (top right) and images from his former apartment at 142 West 109th Street

President Barack Obama may call the White House his home this President’s Day, but during his Columbia University years, a two-bedroom in Morningside Heights was his abode of choice, according to the New York Daily News, which took a look inside the apartment, in honor of the holiday. The apartment, unit 3E at 142 West 109th Street, has seen extensive renovations since Obama lived there three decades ago. The $1,900-a-month apartment between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues was leased up last August. [NYDN] [more]

A sustained increase in mortgage rates over the past several weeks could signal the end of the historic lows seen in 2010, analysts told the New York Times. The popular 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hit 4.17 percent on Nov. 11, the lowest in mortgage giant Freddie Mac’s nearly four-decade history of tracking rates. But since then, rates have ticked upward to 4.83 percent, which the government-backed company recorded Dec. 16. Meanwhile, the Mortgage Bankers Association forecasts an increase in 30-year fixed rates to 5.1 percent by this time next year and 5.7 percent two years from now. [more]