The Real Deal’s seventh annual forum, “The Debate,” at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center. Starting at 6:30 p.m., developer Billy Macklowe will debate Gristedes magnate John Catsimatidis. Then Curbed founder Lockhart Steele will face off against Frederick Peters, president of Warburg Realty Partnership. Finally, attorneys Stuart Saft of Dewey & LeBouef and Adam Leitman Bailey of his eponymous firm will go head-to-head. CNBC anchor Bill Griffeth will be moderating the event. It’s the big event of the year. If you move fast, you can still make it! Please tweet about the event and send questions using hashtag #trddebate. Comments

From left: Architect Frank Gehry, MiMA at 555 West 42nd Street and a rendering of the new Signature Theater

Before architect Frank Gehry regained favor among New Yorkers with projects like 8 Spruce Street, one of the few projects he landed was the renovation of a new space for the 20-year-old Signature Theater Company, according to Media Bistro.

The new theater, located within the Signature Center at 555 West 42nd Street between Dyer and 10th avenues, is slated to open in February 2012. [more]

A rendering of the Claire Tow Theater

As desecrations go, the nearly completed Lincoln Center Theater 3, which sits atop the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, is turning out rather well. The last time we looked at it, nearly two years ago, it was merely a promise. Now that promise is nearing fulfillment.

Designed by Hugh Hardy of H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture (who helped with the Vivian Beaumont design in years past), it rises over the austerely modernist pile that was conceived by Eero Saarinen (primarily) in 1965. The overhaul is scheduled for completion in March of next year, at a cost of $41 million.

In the recent renovations to the Lincoln Center campus, no area has been disrupted more often or more fundamentally than the spaces around the Vivian Beaumont. The plaza, a cool exercise in pure geometry has seen its fountain, inhabited by a Henry Moore sculpture, thoroughly subverted and reconceived, while a curving earthwork has been shoe-horned into the narrow space immediately to the north. As a result of these modifications, the space is surely more lively and popular with the general public, but the purity of its modernist ideas has been dealt a serious blow. [more]

Wanting to see what’s available on the high-end real estate market, The Real Deal took a look at a 5,861-square-foot penthouse unit at the Millenium Tower near Lincoln Center (Park Millennium is the name for the condominium units up to the 44th floor and Millennium Tower is the name for the units on the 45th floor to the penthouse). PH3B hit the market last September at $34.5 million and saw a 14 percent price cut in December to $29.5 million. Howard Margolis, an executive vice president at Prudential Douglas Elliman, and the co-listing broker for the unit, gave The Real Deal a tour of the spread, listed with five bedrooms and eight bathrooms, although configured as a one-bedroom, at 101 West 67th Street, home to celebrities including Howard Stern, Regis Philbin and Alan Alda (see video above). [more]

From left: renderings of the building’s library, trial court room and exterior (source: Pei Cobb Freed & Partners)

Fordham University has broken ground on its new School of Law and residence hall, the school announced today. The 22-story building, a $250 million development on 62nd Street between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, will house the university’s law school on the bottom nine floors, including classrooms, a trial court facility and a 562,000-volume law library. The remaining floors inside the 468,000-square-foot building will be used as dorms for up to 430 undergraduate students. TRD [more]

Glenwood Management is in contract to buy a parcel of land across from Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus for $100 million and has plans to build a high-rise residential tower there, sources told Crain’s. The Amsterdam Avenue property is near the site of another proposed residential tower, for which Fordham had been seeking proposals from developers — including Jeffrey Levine of Douglaston Development — until a recent deadline. [more]

Café des Artistes, the famed Parisian-inspired restaurant on the ground floor of the landmark Hotel des Artistes at One West 67th Street, will reopen under Italian ownership next year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Lincoln Center restaurant closed abruptly last summer after losses related to its unionized staff. Restaurateur Gianfranco Sorrentino, who also owns Il Gottopardo, across the street from the Museum of Modern Art, signed a 15-year lease on the space Friday and plans to open in February or March after $1.5 million worth of renovations with a new, southern Italian menu and name but the same ambiance. He said the work force will not be unionized. [WSJ]

[more]

Renderings of the green roof at Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center is about a month away from unveiling its grass rooftop, which will sit atop the arts center’s new high-end restaurant for public use, according to the Westside Independent. The $102.5 million structure will welcome gastronomic celebrity chef Jonathan Benno of Per Se fame when the eatery opens in September. The sod-covered roof, designed by Scofidio + Renfro, has spent the last year germinating, so that the grass will have a fighting chance once the public comes for a visit. [more]

From the April issue: There are still plenty of unsold new construction condos in New York City, especially in areas like Midtown, the Financial District and Williamsburg. But brokers say that months of busy sales activity (combined with some sellers taking their units off the market) is creating a shortage of inventory in some hot spots. Indeed, Miller Samuel’s fourth-quarter market report found that Manhattan inventory was down 18 percent from the previous quarter and almost 25 percent over the fourth quarter of 2008. In some neighborhoods, buyers are increasingly frustrated because they can’t find the type of apartment — often resale condos or prewar co-ops — they want. As a result, the competition for those apartments, when they do come on the market, can make the downturn seem like a distant memory. This month, The Real Deal asked brokers to identify the types of Manhattan apartments facing the worst shortages. [more]

The city is seeking proposals for an expansion of its Times and Herald Square pedestrian plazas across the city, yesterday asking community non-profit groups to submit ideas for neighborhoods including Murray Hill and the Upper East Side in Manhattan, Astoria, Queens and Borough Park, Brooklyn. The Lincoln Center area is also a likely candidate, with groups already plotting an expansion of Dante Park and an upgrade to the open space near Martin Luther King High School at West 66th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. This isn’t the first time the Department of Transportation has asked for such proposals, having approved 32 applications in a first-round process in 2008, but it is the first time the agency has sought proposals since Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced earlier this year that the trial plazas in Times Square and Herald Square would be there to stay. Groups have until June 30 to submit their proposals, and accepted plazas would be slated for construction by July 2012. [Post]