M. sent word as she was jogging this morning around 7:30a: big chunks of rubble had fallen onto Reade Street from 291 Broadway, the 19-story building on the northwest corner. She said there was a long piece of debris — like the cornice of a building — on the sidewalk across the street. It must have cut through the netting.

Before she had left about 10 minutes later, Department of Buildings inspectors had arrived and the area was roped off.

The building is the home of Downtown Dance Factory and YaYa Preschool among other tenants; parents at the preschool were looking for a temporary space to run class as of this afternoon.

Just at the start of the year, the building was acquired by the son of one of the biggest developers in the city — and he is an established real estate investor and developer in his own right. (I have to assume this is for a conversion.)

William Macklowe Company, which has invested in a couple dozen residential buildings in the city and even more commercial ones, almost all in Midtown, bought the building from Sutton Management Corp. for $52.7 million, according to city records. If I am following the thread correctly, it last traded in 1986 with a mortgage of $1.1 million. In the following three and a half decades, by 2019, the mortgage had ballooned to $46 million.

The building sits just east of the boundary of the Tribeca South Historic District and across Broadway from the African Burial Grounds and The Commons Historic District. It was built in 1910 for the East River Savings Bank and served as the YMCA national headquarters from 1949 to 1980.

The Real Deal reported in December that Macklowe the younger “bought the $46 million note tied to 291 Broadway as the loan barreled toward foreclosure, The Real Deal has learned. Lender Flagstar Bank sold the note to Macklowe for slightly less than the balance of about $45 million, per a source with knowledge of the deal.”

The property went into receivership in August, The Real Deal said.

Billy Macklowe’s father, Harry, developed (among lots others) the American Thread Building here in Tribeca, One Wall Street more recently, as well as the supertall known as 432 Park Avenue — the tallest residential building in the western hemisphere.