The March collapse at 606 West 131st St. (credit: DNAinfo)

Following the collapse of a West 131st Street building in March, Breeze National, the Brooklyn-based, mob-connected demolition company that was running this project and others for Columbia University’s expansion, has been taken off the job, the Daily News reported.

As The Real Deal previously reported, one of the buildings the company was demolishing at 606 West 131st Street collapsed in March, killing one worker and injuring two others. The family of Juan Vicente Ruiz, Sr., the worker who died in the accident, is suing Columbia University, alleging that the construction site was unsafe. [more]

From the May issue: Good news for graduates: While there are still more applicants than job openings in New York City real estate, sources say conditions are getting better. “The hiring environment has improved substantially from the last couple of years,” said Vishaan Chakrabarti, director of the Center for Urban Real Estate at Columbia University. “It’s not as strong as it could be, but there is definitely more interest out there.”

Chakrabarti said he’s seeing an uptick in the number of real estate investment, financial and private equity firms now looking to hire Columbia students. (He declined to name specific companies recruiting at the school, however.) Meanwhile, at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate, 60 companies attended the institute’s recent job fair, up from 40 last spring, the school said. [more]

The site of the collapse, at 606 W. 131st Street (credit: DNAinfo)

[Updated at 1:04 p.m., with comment from Borough President Scott Stringer] One construction worker is dead and two others injured after a collapse this morning at a construction site in West Harlem owned by Columbia University, the police and fire departments told The Real Deal.

A call came in at 7:51 a.m. regarding a collapse at 606 West 131st Street, between Broadway and Riverside Drive, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Buildings (note: correction appended). [more]

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]