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.

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.

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.

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.

Sure, condo prices and sales finally slowed in downtown Boston, but Dorchester, Roxbury, East Boston, Mattapan and Hyde Park saw thousands of homeowners fall behind on their mortgages over the past few years, many losing it all.

But here’s one key sign: The number of foreclosed homes sitting empty and inviting trouble in these neighborhoods has fallen dramatically, reports Evelyn Friedman, head of the Department of Neighborhood Development.

After rising as high as 1,200 at one point, the number of foreclosure specials is now down to 778 – and dropping fast,

City Hall is moving to buy up these homes and resell them to individual home buyers, community nonprofits and contractors. City officials now have either bought or have under agreement 120 foreclosed homes, with more on the way.

There are also other signs that the real estate market in neighborhoods like Dorchester may be finally moving out of crisis mode.

The number of sales and open houses in Dorchester is on the rise after years of decline, the Dorchester Reporter notes.

I’ll take open houses over foreclosures any day.

The Hub is emerging as a leader of sorts in the nation’s office market. But let’s just say the categories it is a standout are not so hot, according to data culled from the just released, Jones Lang LaSalle North American Occupiers Report.

Boston had the biggest drop in leasing activity in the fourth quarter, with a 30 percent plunge, Jones Lang finds.

By contrast, Washington saw just a small drop in activity while New York saw a modest bounce back.

The Boston market is a negative standout by a couple other measures as well.

At nearly 20 percent, the office vacancy rate in the Boston metro market at the end of 2009 was one of the highest of a group of major cities looked at by Jones Lang, with New York and Washington significantly lower.

And with a 25 or more percent drop in rents over 2009, Boston was second only to New York, which saw even steeper reductions by its tower owners.

Still, sometimes you have to look on the bright side. For companies who have to lease space, it is definitely a buyer’s market right now.

Don’t get me wrong – I love newspapers, but maybe now isn’t the time for massive capital investments in print.

Now Zuckerman’s decision makes a bit more sense in light of what appear to be some potential political aspirations.

After our nation’s capital recently ground to halt amid a snowstorm, sparking outrage, the Politico suggested Zuckerman challenge Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty in September’s Democratic primary.

But it looks like Zuckerman may have other ideas as he mulls a run against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York.)

I guess after buying a good chunk of New York’s skyline and Washington’s office market, not to mention downtown Boston, Zuckerman is looking at his next challenge.

Hopefully he’ll keep Boston Properties out the fray. After all, I would hate to see our hometown real estate giant become Washington Properties, or worse, New York Properties.

But here’s the other piece to that deal, and it makes it even sweeter – the tax increment financing agreement also entitles the insurer to millions more in state tax benefits.

How much? According to one estimate, Liberty will get another $20 million from the state, most likely in the form of tax credits.

Still, there a pretty good argument to be made that this will be money well spent, especially amid the high jobless rates of the Great Recession.

The virtues of the giant insurer’s expansion are pretty well known, but I will recap in case you missed it the flurry of stories earlier this month.

While the total cost may amount to roughly $36 million in city and state tax incentives, Liberty will build a 300 foot tower that will generate 600 new permanent jobs. Not to mention wages for hundreds of construction workers, who are now grappling with a jobless rate that may be approaching 50 percent.

Oh yes, and the expansion will also bring in another $50 million in city taxes over the next twenty years as well.

And guess what? Liberty, which has 600 offices worldwide, does not have to expand here. The company, before it opted to build out its Boston headquarters, had been looking at other sites, including some out of state.

Sometimes you have to spend money to make money.

My B&T column Monday argued state officials are on the wrong track as they seek to slash in half a film industry tax credit that has brought a bevy of Hollywood productions into the state and pumped hundreds of millions into the local economy.

Somehow it’s OK to spend taxpayer stimulus dollars to fill potholes, but not OK to provide an incentive to spur job growth in the private sector.

Go figure.

Anyway, along comes the University of Massachusetts at Boston with a new report that argues the tax credit has made our state’s small film industry one of the fastest growing in the country. And at a significantly lower cost than other states also vying for entertainment industry jobs, which often dole out even more generous tax benefits.

Highlights include:

• At a time when the Massachusetts economy has been shedding jobs, the state’s budding film industry has boosted its annual payroll by more than 30 percent. The number of movie and TV industry jobs soared to more than 6,000 in 2008, up from 4,530 in 2005.
• Anchored by public broadcasting powerhouse WGBH, Massachusetts has emerged as a hub for firms specializing in nonfiction television production and related post-production work.
• The state’s growing film industry and related fields it supports is providing opportunities for college graduates who want to stay in the state even as overall employment declines.
• A mix of big-budget productions and smaller films spent more than $17 million on food, $27.2 million on set construction and nearly $30 million on hotels and housing between 2006 and 2008.

After several years checking out sites in Southie and in some of the suburbs and cities that ring the Hub, the FBI is focusing on a site controlled by the Pappas development family.

But, as always, there is competition, with a long-time Chelsea development family aggressively bidding to build the high-tech fortress the bureau seems to want.

But it’s more than a battle of two developers for a likely $200 million project.

Two of our top urban political power brokers are also apparently going at it as well.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino has been lobbying hard to keep the FBI, long quartered near Government Center, in Boston.

But Congressman Michael Capuano is apparently going to bat for the competing proposal in Chelsea, which falls in his district.

Good luck to those Chelsea developers.