From left: Thor CEO Joseph Sitt and 516-520 Fifth Avenue (credit: PropertyShark)

Joseph Sitt’s Thor Equities filed demolition plans yesterday for three adjacent properties on Fifth Avenue, according to city Department of Buildings records. Thor plans to redevelop the three buildings, located at 516, 518 and 520 Fifth Avenue between 43rd and 44th streets, into a 300,000-square-foot building, a spokesperson said. The plans call for building “an architecturally significant modern glass building,” according to a press release the firm sent to The Real Deal. [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]

Litigation relating to the recently demolished Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, between Washington and Greenwich streets, could endanger the budget for downtown projects such as the East River Waterfront, state officials have revealed.

According to DNAinfo, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is the defendant in an $80 million lawsuit filed by criminally-charged Deutsche Bank contractors Boris Lend Lease after the agency failed to make sufficient profit on the troubled demolition.

A fire at the site killed two firefighters in 2007 and Bovis is fighting accusations that they caused the conditions that led to the fatalities. LMDC is also suing Bovis for $100 million as a result of extra costs caused by contractor negligence…. [more]