••• “A scaffold that is more art than nuisance will soon be constructed outside a Flatiron office building and a city hall condo. They are to be the first beneficiaries of a 2010 Big Apple competition to find an esthetically pleasing update for the ubiquitous and, usually, ugly scaffolds that dot our streets. […] Urban Umbrella won the competition and used its $10,000 prize to perfect the system in Toronto. It is now returning to New York to share the visual wealth, starting with several properties, including 20 W. 22nd St. and 19 Murray. […] Built-in LED lighting enables the firm to do ‘cool stuff with custom colors.'” (Not sure how much of an impact it’ll have at 19 Murray, where there are the traditional sidewalk shed on either side.) —New York Post

••• “The contentious race for District 1’s City Council seat remained too close to call as of Wednesday morning, with two-term incumbent Margaret Chin barely ahead of political newcomer Christopher Marte. […] The Board of Elections will not count absentee and provisional ballots until a week after the election to allow time for all the votes to roll in [….] ‘We want to make sure every vote is counted,’ Marte wrote in an email Wednesday morning. ‘We want to look into some of the irregularities at a few voting sites. We continue to be grateful for the support from our community.’ Marte would not elaborate on the alleged irregularities or which polling sites he was referring to, noting he still had to speak with poll watchers.” —DNAinfo

••• Chin, meanwhile released a graceless statement: “After months of politically motivated attacks and lies, our vision for a more affordable and equitable Lower Manhattan remains triumphant. As a result of the support of everyday people, we will have affordable and accessible housing for our seniors, more opportunities for our young people, and a strong advocate for women, people of color and immigrants in the City Council. I thank all of my supporters for being with me every step of the way. I look forward to continuing our work in the community I was raised in, worked in, and which I love with all my heart.”

••• The Broadsheet has an interesting analysis of the city council vote. “In Tribeca, the results were more mixed. Of 1,158 votes cast, 632 were for Ms. Chin, while Mr. Marte took 526. This translates into a smaller local margin of victory, with Ms. Chin taking 55 percent of the tally, while Mr. Marte took 45 percent. In another striking departure from the norm elsewhere Downtown, Mr. Marte won eight of the 15 voting precincts in Tribeca, while Ms. Chin took seven. But Ms. Chin’s surplus in overall votes within Tribeca was enough to put the neighborhood in her column, even as she failed to carry a majority of its individual precincts.” And the bigger picture: “If Ms. Chin’s margin holds, it seems she will have Battery Park City, Tribeca, the Financial District, and the South Street Seaport to thank for her third term. It also may be one more portent of the ongoing demographic shift in the Lower Manhattan landscape, in which the political center of gravity—once firmly anchored in the legacy communities of the Lower East Side—appears to be migrating south and west.”

••• Battery Park City resident Jack Carlson “is a former member of the United States national rowing team and the entrepreneur behind a budding rowing brand—first with a coffee-table book, Rowing Blazers, which chronicles the esoteric history of the colorful blazers worn by elite rowing clubs, and now with an upscale fashion label of the same name.” —New York Times

••• “Diller Island is dead. After years of toe-to-toe battling with a small band of critics and a fellow billionaire, Barry Diller said Wednesday that he was pulling the plug on his family’s commitment to build and operate a $250 million performance center on an undulating pier 186 feet off the Hudson River shoreline.” What a shame. Thanks a lot, Douglas Durst. —New York Times