Serfs on our observatories?

SOME of the financial firms eyeing a move to the $3.1 billion One Vanderbilt may be having mixed emotions over the impact of the observation deck planned for floors close to the twisty top of the 1,301-foot-high skyscraper.

While tourists and New Yorkers alike love to gawk at killer views made available to the masses from such decks, the C-suite occupants of the building seem to be worried the extra visitors could interfere with their own employees.

Let’s recall that so far, 30 Hudson Yards having an observation deck hasn’t deterred Time Warner or other large office tenants from taking dibs at the far West Side building, or concerned tenants at the Big Apple’s observatory champ, the Empire State Building — or at Rockefeller Center.

And remember, the 1.7-million-square-foot One Vandy sits next to one of the world’s greatest transportation hubs on East 42nd Street, which already counts 19.2 million annual visitors.

SL Green is also installing $220 million in transit improvements at One Vandy that will include a block-long dedicated pedestrian area on Vanderbilt Avenue, an underground concourse to create East Side access for 65,000 Long Island Rail Road passengers and a huge waiting room under its base.

That makes the thought of execs turning their noses up at a projected 1.8 million yearly observatory goers almost laughable — after all, the location is literally at Grand Central Terminal and the ob- servatory will be accessed from an underground passage through one of its main concourses.

Sources tell me that developer SL Green Realty Corp. and its partners, the National Pension Service of Korea and Hines, proposed — perhaps in jest — that the concerned firms simply make up the observatory’s projected $42 million in net revenue (from $77 million in gross proceeds) and they will boot the observatory.

A spokeswoman for SL Green said, “That is 1,000 percent not true. They are committed to building the observatory.”

Priceline’s Asian-focused travel site, Agoda, is expanding to a full floor at the Empire State Building.

Agoda is currently on 7,600 square feet on the 47th floor and will be moving up and expanding to the entire 27,000square-foot 66th floor. Deborah van der Hey-

den, Paul Ferraro and Matt Livingston of JLL represented Agoda in the 10-year deal. Fred Posniak and Sha

nae Ursini of the Empire State Realty Trust along with Paul Glickman, Jonathan Fanuzzi, Simon Landmann,

Kip Orban and Harley Dalton of JLL represented ownership. The asking rent was $72 per square foot.

Founded in 2005, Agoda became part of Priceline in 2007. It now has roughly 3,500 people speaking 40 languages in 30 offices around the world to help people book 1 million accommodations a year.

The ESB has also begun a $120 million capital plan to improve its Urban Campus experience for tenants, retailers and tourists.

Owner ESRT just announced it will create a new designated entrance to its own observatory in former retail space at the far western end of the building. In the first half of 2017, the observatory, the most visited in NYC, took in $54.9 million from 1.8 million visitors or just over $31 per entry, its new financial filings reveal.

To show what the busy office, retail and restaurant area will look like after some 13 projects are completed, the Meatpacking Business Improvement District has created a new 3-D video.

Vectuel created the 8 ¹/2-minute work by using architectural renderings borrowed from the various projects that range from the redesign of Ninth Avenue and several public plazas to a variety of new boutique office buildings and retail shops.

The narrated video provides a virtual-reality-like depiction of soonto-be reset cobblestone streets, planters and streetscapes, new bike lanes and truck loading areas, upcoming buildings and the fu- ture traffic patterns.

On Ninth Avenue, for instance, pedestrians will now have a full 30 feet of sidewalk on each side — twice the current allotment — plus with two lanes of traffic, a bike lane, planters, seating and truck parking all on a new cobblestone street.

“Describing the user experience has been a challenge,” explained Lauren Danziger, the BID’s executive director on the reason for its creation. “There are businesses that have been operating through all of this change.” The BID encompasses an area from West 17th Street to Horatio and from the east side of Ninth to Eighth avenues, but most of the construction projects are centered between Gansevoort and West 15th Street and along Ninth and Tenth avenues and won’t be complete for 18 months.