There’s something really wrong with the message sent by the Hub’s decades old downtown parking freeze.

In a bid to comply with the federal Clean Air Act, city officials back in the 1970s capped the number of commercial parking spaces downtown at roughly 35,000.

That now looms as a problem, with only a few hundred spaces left under the cap, potentially creating a big downtown parking crunch in the next few years – just as Boston starts to pull out of the recession. Check out my B&T column this Monday for more on this.

However, maybe as disturbing is the idea that we will save the environment and clean up our polluted air by punishing our humblest commuters.

For the parking freeze is aimed directly at big public parking garages, leaving out parking at luxury hotels and condo towers. In fact, if companies do build new towers, they can put in spaces for their own use – and it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out who will be getting those prized few spaces.

That leaves the administrative staff and back office workers that keep our downtown humming fighting for a dwindling number of available spaces, even as luxury condo owners and chief executives roll into their own private spaces. The commuter rail is an option for some, but clearly not for everyone out there. And that’s before we get into train schedules that are often out of whack with modern working hours and trains that are chronically late or just can’t manage to show up at all in the morning.

But those arrogant enough to take a “let them eat cake’’ attitude may regret this parking shortsightedness later as the economy rebounds. For as the slog into Boston becomes ever more difficult, downtown firms will have find it harder to fill all those critical support staff jobs.

Parking may not be a universal right, but it’s pretty darn important.

Beacon and the Leventhal name are legendary here in Boston. The elder Norman Leventhal and his real estate family helped transform Boston from a grimy backwater to an urban jewel with a series of landmark projects in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

The renovated and restored South Station, Rowes Wharf and the pristine Post Office Square park are all the work of the Leventhals.

Alan Leventhal, Norman’s son, has also more than demonstrated he knows how to turn real estate into gold. Leventhal came out a big winner on the $1.3 billion sale of the Hancock tower and surrounding buildings back a few years ago to New York-based Broadway Partners.

The timing could not have been better, with Leventhal and Beacon getting a top of the market price back in 2006 just before the bubble in tower prices began to deflate. Beacon had just bought the portfolio for $630 million three years before.

But like Broadway, which ended up losing the Hancock tower to foreclosure after one deal too many, Leventhal and Beacon now face loan trouble as well.

Beacon earlier this month missed a $1.6 million mortgage payment on $430 million in debt secured by one of its prize holdings, the 76-story Columbia Center in downtown Seattle.

It probably does not help that 40 percent of the skyscraper is now empty – a problem that is expected to get even worse with Amazon.com expected to bail out of 175,000 square feet.

Anyway, it’s bad news all around.

Sometimes news stories, no matter how well written and researched, just can’t get to the heart of the matter. And that’s too bad, because if you had a hint of the inside dynamics driving the story, you might just take a very different view.

Just take the coverage of International Place developer Don Chiofaro’s threat to pull the plug on his proposal to tear down an ugly parking garage next to the New England Aquarium and put up a pair of skyscrapers.

City Hall was never going to approve this plan for a whole variety of reasons. And while there is certainly an honest desire to protect the Boston’s new Greenway from being overshadowed by a massive new development, let’s just say there is no love lost between Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Chiofaro.

Boston’s answer to Donald Trump, Chiofaro is just the kind of brash, bold talking developer that has always gotten under the mayor’s skin.

Menino may not be a developer, but he takes very seriously his duty to oversee and help plan Boston’s future – not the least what gets built here. Without the mayor on board, you are not going to build a new CVS, let alone a skyscraper.

So Chiofaro’s recent announcement that he will pull the plug on his twin-tower plan unless the city lets him put up a pair of 45-to-50 story skyrises has the ring of someone yelling “I quit’’ just minutes before they are fired.

The next day, City Hall lowered the boom. No spur of the moment backlash, the Boston Redevelopment Authority rolled out proposed new development guidelines that cap the heights of new towers built near the Greenway. These had been months in the making and were no big secret to Chiofaro or anyone else who follows development in Boston.

Needless to say, Chiofaro’s dreams of building another International Place near the waterfront is now on life support - and will officially die once the new Greenway building guidelines are adopted.

The only mystery here is now Chiofaro thought he was going to get his project built by taking on the mayor.

In Boston, that’s hardly a recipe for development success.

Spring is finally here. And there is growing evidence we just may be starting to see a revival in the downtown luxury condo market.

Pending sales of luxury condos – $800,000 and up – are up markedly over last year, according to John Ford, a top downtown broker.

A fresh indicator of market activity, there are 65 condo sales in the works in the luxury end of the market, up at least 25 percent, and probably more, over the start of 2009, Ford tells me.

And so far this year, 28 downtown condos have sold for more than $1,000 a square foot, a key price indicator of multimillion-dollar sales. That is three times the number of such units during the first ten weeks of 2009, according to a new report by luxury condo marketing and research firm Otis & Ahearn.

No point in getting foolishly carried away here. After all, the winter of 2009 was one of the grimmest economic times in memory for the country.

There was talk of another Great Depression, enough to scare the wits out of any prospective luxury condo buyer.

So the bar to clear in beating last year’s numbers was not particularly high.

Still, there’s a rebound building. And it is certainly an unexpected one given the struggles the high end of the real estate market has had of late in the suburbs and across the country.

Sorry if I sound like a cheerleader today. Let’s just say that is somewhat out of character for me.But really, there is no other way of saying this. Hub Mayor Thomas M. Menino completely outfoxed one of the Big Apple’s (supposedly) shrewdest and most powerful developers.

Who in the world knows what Steve Roth, chairman of Vornado, the New York-based, cash flush retail development giant, was thinking when he boasted to a Columbia University audience of deliberately letting a New York building become blighted in order to get government money.

That’s the task now of his high-powered public relations handlers, who I can assure you get very big bucks to head off such disastrous gaffes.

But the remarks came with Vornado facing increasing pressure from Menino and Boston officials over the stalled Filene’s project, which has left a half-demolished block in the center of Downtown Crossing.

Roth’s remarks, picked up by a New York paper, were the equivalent to a soft and easy pitch up the middle to Menino, one of the savviest political operators out there.

Needless to say, he hit it out of the park, calling Roth on his remarks, threatening to take the property by eminent domain, and landing on the front-page.

After months of grumbling, Menino now has the upper hand in this high-stakes chess game with the Vornado chief.

I often wondered why Menino did not make more of recent revelations in the New York Post that Vornado is sitting on a $1.5 billion cash stockpile. After all, the developer and its local partners are claiming they can’t round up the financing to transform the Filene’s block into a $700 million high-rise complex.

It turns out he was just waiting for a better pitch.

Talk about a case of massive denial.The decision by a group of local business executives to pull the plug on plans for an $80 million cultural showcase on Boston’s new Greenway was a long time in coming.

As I reported in my B&T column last May, the project’s backers had already called a halt to their fundraising efforts, a sure sign that things were not exactly headed in the right direction.

However, the demise of the New Center for Arts and Culture is just latest grandiose scheme for building on Boston’s new Greenway to collapse over the past decade.

It’s a trail of pipedreams that goes back to the absurd Garden Under Glass, a $100 million fantasy project pushed by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society that tied up a key piece of the new parkland near South Station for years.

Along the way, there has been one consistent pattern – a refusal by civic, political and business leaders to face unpleasant facts and demand a more realistic plan for leveraging this potential civic jewel.

Really, it hasn’t been all that hard to figure out that most of these sweeping proposals for new Greenway museums and cultural palaces - each realistically requiring tens of millions from private donors, and likely more - had slim if any chance of succeeding.

Just take horticultural society folks, who spent well than a decade and a half, from the early 1990s well into the 2000s, spinning their vision of a glass encased botanical garden near South Station.

The only problem was the group was unable to raise a dime to back up its efforts, despite all manners of excuses.

But the old Massachusetts Turnpike Authority just kept on giving the group a free pass, with Boston officials looking on.

Often, in dealing with these projects as a reporter, I found that common sense inquiries were dismissed by backers, who were too often better at presenting a pretty picture than with realistically assessing the chances of success in a harsh fundraising climate.

The fact is, the region’s economy has been in a funk for a decade now, making it hard for developers to build new commercial buildings, let alone fledging nonprofits with dreams of erecting Greenway cultural statements.

And there’s already a bevy of well-established competitors out there rattling the tin cup as well, including the Museum of Fine Arts.

Is this finally the end of the Greenway pipedreams? I hope so – but somehow I am not so sure.

In normal times, developers push hard to get local and state approvals as fast as possible. Time is money and delays in construction can prove costly.But these are not ordinary times.

Instead of lobbying for swifter action, the development industry’s local trade group is pushing state lawmakers to let builders across the Bay State take a breather during the downturn.

A proposal by NAIOP Massachusetts would give developers who already have their permits lined up, but have been unable to start construction, another three years to work with before their approvals expire.

Gov. Deval Patrick and the Senate have both taken up versions of this proposal, with another permit extension bill under review by a key House committee.

If nothing else, the proposals provide a window into the depth of the current recession and how hard it has hit local developers.

A proposal NAIOP submitted last year called for a two-year permit extension, three years as proposed now.

Realistically, it means many projects may not get rolling until the middle of the decade.

House Speaker Robert DeLeo is finally showing his cards when it comes to legalizing expanded gambling in the Bay State.

But if you think we are getting a Foxwoods style resort anytime soon, you can just keep dreaming.

Despite talk about two casinos, the core of the House leader’s plan is for a more down and dirty version of gambling, one that features thousands of slot machines at the state’s racetracks.

In case you missed it, DeLeo - who not coincidentally has the Suffolk Downs and Wonderland racetracks in this district - just made his pitch for more gambling to local business executives.

While the gambling debate has taken years, we could very well see four racinos – industry jargon for racetrack with slots – in a matter of months.

Provided DeLeo can push through gambling legislation this spring, the approval process for racetrack slots may not be as onerous as you think.

All four racetracks already run long-established gambling operations, so local opposition is likely to be muted. The owners of the tracks are also well-known local players, so the licensing process is not likely to drag on either.

But resort casinos could be much longer in coming, especially given our state’s well-known love of major development projects.

The front-runner is Suffolk Downs, which is already preparing to quickly launch a racino-like operation as it lays the groundwork for an more extensive casino resort.

Mohegan Sun has been busy pushing plans for a smaller version of its Connecticut resort just across the Massachusetts border in Palmer.

But larger scale casino plans are likely to take years to both win local and state approvals and to build out.

The grander the plan, the bigger target it becomes for activists of all stripes, whether foes of gambling or others wary of large-scale development.

In the case of Palmer, the locals may be supportive, but there is no long history of coexistence with a racetrack to fall back on.

Frankly, the Bay State is a tough state to build anything remotely ambitious. Just ask developers pushing plans for new office towers or suburban housing developments.

So if you think it will be easy for casino developers to push ahead with their plans, you clearly haven’t lived around here long enough.