••• “Borders Group, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, said it would shutter three of its five locations in Manhattan. The biggest of all of the stores to be shut is the one on Park Avenue at 57th Street. The others are on Second Avenue at 32nd Street and on Broadway near Wall Street.” (New York Times)

Courtesy Curbed

••• “A plan to build a luxury hotel in Tribeca has hit another snag as landmarks officials raised issues about its latest design. But the building owners say they can work out the problems. The property at 87 Chambers St. [left, a.k.a. 71 Reade] had been occupied by a historic but dilapidated building that its owners had first tried to convert into a hotel. But those plans came to a halt after the structure partially collapsed in 2009. Since then, the owners have been preparing to construct an entirely new hotel on the site.” (Wall Street Journal) You have to subscribe to the WSJ to read the article, but Curbed shared the relevant part: “The commissioners thought the window openings were too flat, and the architects need to work on ‘more richness in terms of texture and articulation.'”

••• “You want to enjoy a place like Compose,” starts out Time Out New York‘s review of Compose.

••• The New York Observer has an interesting article on the history of 36 Lispenard (where La Colombe is now): “Meanwhile, Ruggles’ home at the other end of the block, a townhouse at 36 Lispenard Street, became a known terminal on the underground railroad, and through it Ruggles ferried, by his count, 600 runaway slaves to freedom. Among them was Frederick Douglass, who was also married at Ruggles’ Lispenard Street house.” But you have to wade through some purple prose (“New York has never been much for cobblestone and colonnade, vistas seeping historical vernacular and cocooning inhabitants in fantasies of a past continuum. Famously amnesiac, its building stock chronically provisional, New York offers a past that comes at us in fits and starts—a sideways glimpse, a shimmering peripheral vision at best. Mostly, though, we rehash it through our great municipal pastime, the blood sport of New York real estate.”) And that’s the lede. Semi-related: If you’re interested in New York history, you might enjoy (as I did) Peter Carey’s most recent novel, Parrot & Olivier in America. Parts of it take place around here.

••• “Opposition is beginning to coalesce around the proposal by Brookfield Properties, which owns the World Financial Center, to demolish the Grand Staircase within the Winter Garden.” (Broadsheet Daily)

••• Check out this loft renovation on Apartment Therapy, via Curbed.

••• “The struggling Seaport Museum New York put 32 staff members—about half its staff—on unpaid furloughs […].” (The New York Times, via Curbed) Related: Manhattan User’s Guide tweeted that Bowne & Co. stationers has closed.

••• Eater gathered first impressions of David Burke Kitchen, the new restaurant in the James hotel, at Sixth and Grand.

••• “Julie Menin, chairwoman of Community Board 1 and an LMDC board member, thinks the LMDC should close by Sept. 11, 2011 at the latest.” (DNAinfo)

••• “A new condominium in Tribeca, Reade57, plans to launch sales this spring, after recently topping off construction, according to developer the John Buck Company and Brown Harris Stevens Select, which is marketing the property. John Buck, a Chicago-based firm, also developed the Standard Hotel in the Meatpacking District. Reade57, a 20-story building at 57 Reade Street on the corner of Broadway, will include 84 studios, one-, two- and three-bedroom units, ranging in size from 713 square feet to 1,863 square feet. The condos are priced from $814,000 to $2.49 million.” (The Real Deal)