It looks like 2010 will not be the year of the commercial real estate comeback.

Office vacancy rates will continue to rise until late this year or early 2011, before leveling off.

Making the prediction is none other than Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.

Interesting source, certainly.

Anyway, even if the jobs market continues to make gains over the next few months, commercial real estate is one of those lagging indicators.

It’s the last one into a recession and the last one out.

I guess it’s just more fun to build down in the Big Apple.

The Filene’s site remains an ugly hole in the heart of what was once Boston’s most vibrant shopping district.

Too bad Vornado Chairman Steve Roth can’t think as creatively about his erstwhile Boston development plans as he is about some of his pet Manhattan projects.

Roth and Vornado have floated a plan to move Madison Square Garden off its current home atop Pennsylvania Station, The Wall Street Journal reports. That’s right, the massive old sports complex, now in the midst of an $850 million renovation, would be shifted an entire block west to a somewhat more advantageous location.

Meanwhile, Vornado and its local partners continue to claim they can’t find the financing to build the tower slated to take shape next to the old Filene’s complex in the middle of Downtown Crossing.

Maybe Roth then needs to take a page from his New York plans, build the Filene’s tower, and then roll it a block or two over to the Financial District.

That has got to be easier than moving an old dinosaur like Madison Square Garden to another site.

I’m sure Mayor Thomas M. Menino would just love that idea, don’t you think?

Office tower prices continue to sink. Heck, they are even managing to make home prices look like a rock of stability in a still shaky economy.

Commercial property prices fell another 2.4 percent in the second quarter, according to an index put out by the MIT Center for Real Estate.

That’s 41 percent below the commercial market’s price peak in mid-2007. And it’s 3 percent below the bottom hit in mid-2009, with the Great Recession in full swing.

Like the housing market, it’s tricky calling a bottom here. But actions speak louder than words – just check out Boston Properties and other REITs, which are stockpiling cash to go on a distressed property shopping spree.

OK, you are probably wondering what I have been smoking after reading that headline.

After all, the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe just made a splash when it rolled out a proposal to build a casino in Fall River.

So far, most of the media coverage of this move appears to be buying into an erroneous assumption, actively promoted by the tribe. Basically, the Mashpees want everyone to believe they can just keep on brandishing all those threats to build a Foxwoods style casino on a federally approved reservation, one where they won’t have any obligation to pay any taxes.

Well not so fast.

With one silly press release, the tribe is effectively abandoning years worth of work trying to get a federally approved reservation set up in Middleborough.

Basically, the tribe has failed in its efforts to convince the federal government to set up a reservation in Middleborough and now is moving to Plan B. They may not be saying it, but it’s clear the best shot now is simply bidding to build a commercial casino, hoping the tribal connection offers a marketing edge.

That’s a far cry from a Foxwoods style casino, where the tribe controls the property and holds most of the cards in its negotiations with state officials.

Maybe they can start the torturous federal approval process all over again in Fall River – if so we are talking about years of paperwork and reviews and no guaranteed result. There’s also last year’s Supreme Court decision, which appears to shut the door on recently recognized tribes, like the Mashpees, setting up new reservations, though the tribe keeps saying its confident Congress will overturn it.

Don’t hold your breath on that one.

As they say, buy at the bottom and sell at the top.

That’s the strategy our hometown real estate giant, Boston Properties, is pursuing as the hard-hit commercial office market skids along the bottom.

In a recent conference call with analysts, media mogul Mortimer Zuckerman, Boston Properties’ chairman, pointedly noted the real estate investment trust had recently raised $700 million. Not only that, the rates are on this nice little war chest of potential acquisition financing are in the 5.5 percent range.

Boston Properties could, in turn, leverage that $700 million into $3 billion in various deals, of what type Zuckerman was vague, but I think you get the picture.

The real estate giant’s move to bulk up on cash comes as lenders start to lose patience with some commercial real estate investors who overpaid during the bubble years and now are struggling. That could mean some real bargains as distressed towers and suburban office complexes hit the market.

That’s my little market overview, not Zuckerman’s. Here’s what the New York Daily News publisher, who is rumored to be a candidate for everything from the U.S. Senate to mayor of Washington, had to say.

If Mort ever plans to run, he’s certainly got the vague, politician lingo down pat.

“Now, the reason why this is valuable for us is I am sure obvious to all of you but I’ll just repeat it, it does give us the opportunity to be in the market for certain opportunities that will be coming forth,’’ Zuckerman told analysts.

Should be an interesting few months.

Forget about downtown Boston, it’s the suburban market that’s taking the real beating right now.

Take a look at some recent numbers from CresaPartners, including:

· Office vacancy in the 495 North corridor – think Andover, Tewksbury and Wilmington – is now one of the highest in Greater Boston, at 31 percent. And that number is only likely to increase as the year wears on.

· The 495 West/Mass Pike corridor is not far behind, with vacancy rates nearing the 30 percent mark, though rent declines, have begun to level off.

· Meanwhile, the Rt. 128 West market, the prima donna of Greater Boston’s suburban office sector, with the amount of empty corporate suites poised to hit the 25 percent mark.

So enough with the handwringing over the downtown Boston office market, which recently hit 20 percent empty. That’s the kind of number office building owners in the suburbs would die for.

So Boston’s new convention center wants taxpayers to help foot the bill for a new, 1,000 room hotel.

It’s in the Globe today – I wrote about this back in early December in my weekly column for B&T.

It’s pretty clear that if Boston’s already giant convention center is to nearly double in size, the city will need a lot more hotel rooms than it already has.

But as I predicted in my column, the convention authority’s angling for a new, publicly subsidized hotel could end up being the most controversial element of the whole proposal.

But there’s one obvious impact here that I don’t seeing getting explored, at least in the latest flurry of news on this issue.

Beyond whether it’s a good investment, there’s the issue of subjecting Boston’s already established hotels to unfair, subsidized competition.

The Westin Waterfront got built with all sorts of public infrastructure assistance but no direct hand out as is being eyed now. Yet this stirred up a fair amount of resent among Hub hoteliers.

So just imagine the reaction to millions in direct subsidies, including taxpayer-backed financing for a new, 1,000 room hotel.

When one hotel gets a generous helping of taxpayer subsidies, its competitors fear that it will undercut them rates and still come out ahead.

And the last time I looked, most Boston hotels are already struggling to get by in a tough economy, let alone having to deal with a hungry, new competitor on the block, paid for by you and me.

Didn’t the developer behind the W Boston just file for bankruptcy?

Given the stakes here for Boston’s hotel community, it will be interesting to see what kind of fight they put up.

Gov. Deval Patrick sparked a backlash from the Legislature when he proposed cutting a multimillion-tax credit used to lure West Coast film studios to the Bay State.

I weighed in against the proposal as well in my B&T weekly column, arguing the tax credits were well worth the cost given the steady stream of blockbuster productions setting up camp in downtown Boston and across the state.

The House defeated the governor’s proposal by a lopsided margin, but the rancorous debate apparently may have been enough enough to scare out some big budget productions.

Typically, Massachusetts draws between eight and 12 major productions a year.

But this year, the number may be closer to eight, said Nick Paleologos, executive director of the Massachusetts Film Office.

While the Legislature was debating the proposed tax credit cuts, some studio executives may have decided to bypass the state and make plans to shoot elsewhere given the uncertainty.

Any drop in activity, in turn, could prove damaging to a number of developers – from South Boston to Plymouth - pushing plans to build movie studios locally where films from out of town can do their editing and production work.

On the good news side of the ledger, Boston is still in the running to be the host of a TV series called Boston’s Finest. ABC is expected to make a decision on that $100 million production in the next few weeks

Wow, that was fast.

My B&T column on Monday took aim at years of foot-dragging by the Legislature on a proposal that would make mortgage fraud a criminal offense in Massachusetts.

Three days later, on Thursday, the Senate passed a wide-ranging foreclosure bill that includes a new law making this destructive behavior a crime here in the Bay State.

I guess I should pat myself on the back. Just kidding, I haven’t lost my head – I just happened to hit on a timely topic.

It’s now up to the House to follow through after a big push by Sen. Susan Tucker (D-Andover) to get his bill over the top.

And, as I noted in my column, this is one badly needed and long-delayed piece of legislation.

Gov. Deval Patrick first filed legislation making mortgage fraud a crime back in the summer of 2007.

But the proposal fell into some Beacon Hill legislative black hole, only to resurface this year.

The delay has meant all sorts of fraudsters and small-time speculators for the most part have not had to worry about jail time, despite leaving a devastating trail of foreclosures in poor neighborhoods from Boston to Springfield.

One thing that’s great about the commercial real estate industry, at least from the perspective of someone who has reported on it for years, is that it’s not rocket science.

Want to figure out how long it will take for the nation’s battered office market to get back on its feet?

Well just start watching the unemployment rate. As jobs disappear, vacant space comes on the market. As companies start to hire, it fills up again.

There’s typically a lag time, but A always equals B.

With that in mind, the Jones Lang LaSalle’s spring forecast offers a sobering look at the challenges ahead.

Among the lowlights:

· The U.S. office market has shed 2.5 million office jobs over the course of the Great Recession. That’s about 8.5 percent of the total.

· We’ve gained back about 108,000 office jobs since last October.

· The financial services sector, a mainstay of Boston’s office market, continues to dole out pink slips, with another 36,000 job cuts in March alone

· But pity the construction workers. Employment in the building trades has plunged 27 percent from its peak.