••• “Last month, Douglas Durst walked away from the Friends of Hudson River Park advocacy group over a disagreement with the trust that runs the Manhattan watefront [sic] park. The key dispute had been over what to do with Pier 40 [….] Mr. Durst insists housing is undesirable and unnecessarily expensive, and the better option is to keep the pier largely as is, adaptively reusing the space to more efficiently house the roughly 1,400 cars that park on the pier, freeing up room to create commercial space, likely occupied by tech firms, art galleries and other decidely [sic] downtown tenants. Last night, Mr. Durst presented his plan at a public meeting, where it was warmly if cautiously received.” The rendering is from Dattner Architects, and the whole presentation is loaded into the New York Observer article.

••• “Investigators are looking into whether a mechanical mishap led to Wednesday’s crash that left 57 hurt.” —DNAinfo

••• Mommy Poppins has a fun, thorough list of Tribeca activities for kids—it mentions Tribeca Citizen in the intro, which is always nice—as well as a guide to the neighborhbood. Also, did you know Mommy Poppins founder Anna Fader used to live in the Ear Inn building? “In the mid-1970s, the building housed a group of artists who ran the pub and, with the help of Anna’s mother, published a music journal called The Ear out of the upstairs apartment where Anna and her mom lived.” There’s more in this New York Family profile.

••• Racked picked up my post about Steven Alan’s forthcoming home store, adding this quote from Alan, as said to WWD last spring: “We have an office space on Franklin Street [in New York] that we’re moving out of in July, so we’re considering doing home there. It would be a mixture of vintage and new products, and eventually we’d also make our own things.”

••• Jenga Building news: “Construction was restarted in October on the previously stalled luxury condo building at 56 Leonard Street in Tribeca and now a fresh $350 million construction loan has been secured for the project, Izak Senbahar, president of Alexico Group, the project’s developer, confirmed. A consortium of seven major banks, led by Bank of America, are backing the massive loan.” Now who’s going to loan me the money for an apartment there? —The Real Deal

••• Penthouse 7N (how many penthouses are there?) at 169 Hudson, a.k.a. Skylofts, has an infinity pool with a waterfall. It’s yours for $24M. —Curbed

••• Photographer Brian Ferry likes to visit Mondo Cane. —Racked

••• Manhattan Loft Guy parses a sale at the Dietz Lantern building (429 Greenwich).

••• “Residents of 160 Front Street sent along an update today, noting more poor communication from Samson Management. Like? Management sent an email to tenants today, January 9, notifying them that the building has been habitable since January 3. A little late, no? And the only reason the email was sent today was because the building is experiencing more problems.” —Curbed