••• “Metro Loft Management, the owner of eight offices-turned-apartments in the area, recently added 70 Pine Street, a 66-story Art Deco high-rise built in 1932, to its portfolio. The former headquarters of the embattled American International Group, 70 Pine is the fifth-tallest building in New York. Its limestone, brick and granite exterior, which tapers to a point like a rocket ship of the Flash Gordon era, was declared a landmark, as was its orange-marble lobby, whose details include aluminum light fixtures with a design of petals. Metro Loft bought 70 Pine this winter for $205 million with a longtime partner, the Eastbridge Group, a fashion-retail-focused investment firm based in Luxembourg. The million-square-foot skyscraper is scheduled to open as a rental by the summer of 2013.” —New York Times. I didn’t read the whole article, but Curbed did: “There are two possibilities, the Times reports. The building—previously slated for a condo conversion—could become a 300-room hotel with 700 apartments above. Or the whole thing could just go rental, with a total of around 970 apartments.” The photo, by the way, is by James Estrin (for the NYT) and it’s of the observatory atop the building.

••• What am I, chopped liver? Kutsher’s Tribeca let Grub Street know that the front of the restaurant is being turned into Charlie Kutsher’s Express Lunch Counter starting Tuesday. “All the soups, salads, and sandwiches on the special menu are ready in fifteen minutes or less, and the restaurant is adding some new combos like a half-soup and half-sandwich for $14. Take the food or go or stay for a quick bite in the front part of the restaurant.”

••• Headline of the day: “Feces-Tossing Protester Arrested in Courthouse Fight.” —DNAinfo

••• Also: “Trinity Church Snuffs Out Grassroots Push for Leadership.” —DNAinfo

••• “Melvin L. Schweitzer, a New York Supreme Court judge, dismissed a lawsuit brought by nine graduates of New York Law School who accused their alma mater of misleading them about their postgraduate employment prospects.” —New York Times

••• “Since 2008, residents of New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood have had one of the city’s top spas right in their midst—but have never had access to it themselves. As of this week, though, Shibui Spa, set in a spectacular subterranean space below the Greenwich Hotel, is taking reservations for those who aren’t hotel guests.”  When they invited me to write about it they didn’t mention any of that…? [Must start reading emails all the way through….]—Departures

••• Spruce Street School has a new CSA. —Broadsheet

••• Real Estate Weekly profiles Madelyn Wils, head of the Hudson River Park Trust: “The park reported an operating deficit of $10 million last year, but with Pier 40 in disrepair and other piers awaiting development—one is still in use as Department of Sanitation parking facility—the park’s need for capital investment is significant. Even without taking maintenance into consideration, Wils estimates $200 million is needed to finish the park.”