Mickel$on tax: What the putt?

New tax laws have Phil Mickelson teed off.

The wealthy pro golfer — known as “Lefty” on the golf circuit — threatened to make some “drastic changes” because of federal and state tax hikes that are crimping his style.

“There are going to be some drastic changes for me because I happen to be in that zone that has been targeted both federally and by the state and, you know, it doesn’t work for me right now,” the San Diego native said at the conclusion of a tournament at La Quinta Country Club in La Quinta, Calif.

Mickelson, 42, alluded to the possibility that the 22nd -ranked golfer — who has a net worth of $180 million and earned roughly $47 million last year, according to Forbes — may leave California.

AP

Phil Mickelson

“So I’ve got to make some decisions on what I’m going to do,” said the four-time major golf championship winner to reporters Sunday.

“If you add up all the federal and you look at the disability and the unemployment and the Social Security and the state, my tax rate’s 62, 63 percent,” he noted.

Tax changes made to close the gap on a $700 million budget shortfall in California have irked wealthy residents, compelling more to mull leaving the state, said managing shareholder Betty Williams at Williams & Associates.

“Many [high earners] are stuck with a tax liability that they didn’t really help create,” Williams said. “Mickelson has to consider where he’s getting his value for his taxes.”

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‘Shake’r joins hot UWS list

Star restaurateur Danny Meyer has joined the top-flight tenant tasters at the now-shuttered Ollie’s space next door to the Apple store on the Upper West Side, Side Dish has learned.

The 7,500-square-foot space at 1991 Broadway by Lincoln Center is coveted in large part because of its current neighbor.

“Being directly next door to Apple is a dream for any retailer or restaurateur, and we expect a tremendous amount of interest,” said property agent Jeffrey Roseman of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank Retail.

Sources say brands including Microsoft, Nike, Anthropologie and Patagonia have expressed interest, along with other restaurant groups such as the Cheesecake Factory and Junior’s.

Meyer is the CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, whose restaurants include Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern and the burger phenomenon, Shake Shack.

***

LA-based Michael Della Femina — whose father, ad guru Jerry Della Femina, just sold his home in East Hampton for $25 million — is looking for pop-up restaurant spots in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Hamptons.

His plan is to replicate Slate, the LA café and panini bar pop-up he owns with fellow actor Josh Weinstein, in New York. Slate, at 6541 Santa Monica Blvd., is around the corner from Rao’s new LA outpost.

Della Femina and Weinstein also partnered on “Bloody” Bill Annesley’s 2009 pop-up, Libertine, in West Hollywood.

So far, Della Femina has looked at a 500-square-foot gallery space on Sullivan Street and at a 400-square-foot butcher shop on Court Street in Cobble Hill. He also checked out a gallery space in Sag Harbor.

No leases were signed, however, and Della Femina will be back in a couple of weeks to continue the hunt, a source said.

***

SIGHTING: Joanne Binder bringing the fake diamond necklace featured in the title sequence of the James Bond movie “Diamonds are Forever” to a friend’s birthday dinner at Da Tommaso. Her uncle, Maurice Binder, was the film’s title designer.

jkeil@nypost.com

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The ungodly gross-out epic H’wood’s A-list wants to forget

You’d think a movie starring Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Naomi Watts, Halle Berry, Richard Gere, Liev Schreiber, Uma Thurman, Emma Stone, Jason Sudeikis, Elizabeth Banks and Terrence Howard — just to name a few — would have a prestigious December release date, a splashy premiere and a shot at the Oscars.

So why is “Movie 43” getting dumped — quickly and quietly — in theaters this Friday?

“The studio is not hiding it,” says producer Peter Farrelly. “We knew it would have to find its audience, and believe me, it will.”

Even if half of Hollywood is running the other way.

“Movie 43” was 10 years in the making. It’s the brainchild of Farrelly’s longtime producing partner Charlie Wessler, who wanted to make a “Kentucky Fried Movie” for the modern age.

No studio would touch it. Nor would a certain segment of the A-list: Farrelly says that when he approached George Clooney about playing himself in a sketch (the gag: George Clooney is bad at picking up women), Clooney told him, “No f--king way.”

None of the stars has promoted the film on talk shows or in magazines — which only generates more curiosity about what may the weirdest theatrical release ever.

Judging from the trailer, it’s not hard to see why most of the cast is keeping their distance. A loose assemblage of self-contained comedy sketches, “Movie 43” features Anna Faris as a young woman asking her boyfriend “Will you poop on me?”; Berry shoving her breasts in a bowl of guacamole; Jackman and Winslet on a first date, with Winslet distracted by the balls hanging from Jackman’s chin; Stone and Kieran Culkin fighting over who gave whom STDs; Gerard Butler as a leprechaun who threatens to cut off Johnny Knoxville’s “balls and feed ’em to ya!”

“I just want to reinforce that the movie wasn’t an attempt to shock,” says producer John Penotti. They did, after all, cut a sketch about necrophilia.

“That’ll be on the DVD,” Wessler says.

Initially, Trey Parker and Matt Stone — creators of “South Park” and “The Book of Mormon” — were involved, but they dropped out. So did the famed Zucker brothers (“Kentucky Fried Movie,” “Airplane!”).

“I pitched this thing to every studio,” Wessler says. “Every executive. Nannies at parties.”

Farrelly remained the biggest name on the project; in the mid-’90s, he and brother Bobby were responsible for hits such as “Dumb & Dumber,” “Kingpin” and “There’s Something About Mary.”

The $6 million budget was funded by Relativity Media, which is also distributing the film. Other potential backers, Farrelly says, “didn’t believe it could happen — a movie with Kate Winslet for $6 million.”

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An infantile spectacle

Rich Lowry

President Obama set a new standard for stupidly exploitative White House events by appearing onstage with children to unveil his gun-control proposals.

He quoted from the kids’ letters. He invoked their Solomonic authority: “Their voices should compel us to change.” He signed executive orders as they gazed on adoringly. He hugged and high-fived them.

No doubt every parent thinks his or her little Johnny or Sally is the next James Q. Wilson. That doesn’t make it so. Some of the wisdom that the president shared from his adorable pen pals was, “[I] want everybody to be happy and safe,” and “I feel really bad.”

News flash: Kids don’t want bad things to happen. This would be a genuinely useful insight . . . if we could write public policy in crayon. The White House event smacked of the old unilateral disarmament campaigns of the 1980s when we were supposed to abolish nuclear weapons because they scared youngsters.

We can assume that the kids onstage with Obama don’t have a fine-grained sense of the limits of gun control or a proper regard for the Second Amendment. That’s OK, though — neither does he.

It can’t be said that using kids as props was beneath the gravity of occasion, since the occasion was all about feel-good PR and make-believe. For all the emphasis on stopping another Sandy Hook, Obama didn’t offer any gun-control proposals that would do it.

The president plugged for a universal background check. Adam Lanza’s mother, who owned the guns he used on his rampage, passed a background check. James Holmes, the Aurora, Colo., shooter, passed two background checks. So did the Virginia Tech shooter (although he shouldn’t have).

The president wants a new assault-weapons ban. He told of how another school shooting happened in California while networks were broadcasting a Joe Biden news conference about his task force. He didn’t mention that the shooter used a shotgun, not an assault weapon. He could have said that there was yet another recent shooting at a Kentucky community college. The shooter used a semiautomatic pistol.

During his remarks introducing the president, Biden invoked Colin Goddard, a survivor of the Virginia Tech shooting in the audience. Seung-Hui Cho shot him four times. Not with an assault weapon. Cho perpetrated the worst school shooting in U.S. history with a semiautomatic pistol.

The president called for a ban of magazines of more than 10 rounds (fewer than some guns have as a standard feature). This would have made a difference in Newtown only if you presume that Lanza, who knew his way around firearms, couldn’t have reloaded in the permissive environment of an elementary school without a guard.

Unfortunately, no one can write a law against mothers owning guns that one day might be turned against them by deranged sons who then commit horrific acts of murder-suicide. Shooting rampages are very hard to prevent because they are so often committed by disturbed young men without criminal records who don’t care if they are caught and usually want to die.

These are adult facts that don’t intrude on the childish world of White House policymaking. They must have eluded Biden in the course of his consultations with 229 different groups that just happened to result in recommendations from his task force that anyone could have predicted beforehand.

To justify any gun-control measure, no matter how ineffectual or symbolic, Biden talks of adopting an “if it saves one life” standard. If that really were the White House’s guiding principle — politics and the expense be damned — it would push massive stop-and-frisk crackdowns in the nation’s cities. It would take up the National Rifle Association’s proposal for armed guards at every school in America. But what it really wants is as much gun control as it can plausibly get in the aftermath of Newtown. As Rahm Emanuel might put it, never let a massacre go to waste.

There’s no reason for kids to see through it. Discerning adults should.

comments.lowry@nationalreview.com

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Re-evaluating Andrew

Striking bus drivers are making it hard for kids to get to school, even resorting to thuggery to stop them — but why even go, when they’re bound to find lousy teachers waiting for them when they get there?

Too often, that’s the case in this city; ineffective teachers can’t easily be fired. Yesterday, the United Federation of Teachers froze that sorry status quo by nixing any reasonable system for rating teachers and firing those who can’t cut it.

Not even the lure of $450 million in state and federal funds, which Gov. Cuomo assured folks would seal the deal, could buy the union’s cooperation.

AP

Gov. Cuomo

We refer the governor to our words from one year ago: “As long as Cuomo leaves the union with a veto over reforms,” we said, “there’ll never be any — even if districts lose state aid.”

Alas, he ignored our warning and left the unions veto power. Sure enough, yesterday our prediction bore out, sad as it is to note. New York’s kids will pay the price.

At the time, recall, Cuomo was trying to fix a 2010 teacher-evaluation law that he rightly called “unworkable by design.”

The law, he said, “protected the teachers union at the expense of the students.”

Yet then he pushed a new law that is just as unworkable.The failure of the city and the UFT to come to terms by yesterday — Cuomo’s deadline — shows just how flawed it is.

Of course, the UFT was ready to accept a sham evaluation system. For example, it wanted any plan to be scrapped after two years. The catch: It takes at least that long to get rid of poor teachers, so no teacher could’ve been removed in time. Great.

Kudos to Mayor Bloomberg for rejecting the charade, even if it cost nearly half a billion in state and local funds.

It’s futile to blame the UFT. After all, the union isn’t in business to serve students; its job is to protect teachers, even the bad ones. The real culprit here is the law.

We have two questions. First: Will Cuomo heed our warning now, and push legislation that holds teachers accountable, even over union objections?

Second: Will Bloomberg’s successor stand as firmly he has? (UFT boss Michael Mulgrew says, ominously, that he’s only too happy to wait for the next administration to take office “in 11 months.”)

Meanwhile, 1.1 million city schoolkids will be counting on Cuomo & Co. — that is, if the kids can manage to make it to school.

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Give us your drives

The Securities and Exchange Commission has become more aggressive in seeking full hard drives from the companies and individuals it investigates, startling defense lawyers who question whether the agency is allowed to obtain such information.

It is part of a larger effort by enforcement authorities, both criminal and civil, to use bolder and more sophisticated tools to nab fraudsters who themselves are becoming savvier in their techniques.

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BamCare’s next crisis

Betsy McCaughey

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported last week that health spending in the United States inched up 3.9 percent in 2011 — the latest available statistics, and the third year in a row it rose at that tiny rate. It’s the slowest pace in 52 years, after decades of staggering double-digit increases.

It’s an embarassing fact for President Obama. To frighten the nation into passing the Affordable Care Act (a k a ObamaCare), he repeatedly warned throughout 2009 and 2010 of “skyrocketing” health-care costs threatening family budgets and the nation’s economy. He even labeled these “skyrocketing” costs “the domestic crisis of our time.”

Now the data show just the opposite, that health-care spending was growing more slowly than at any other time in the last half-century.

The federal report highlights one reason for the trend: a decline in inpatient hospital care (down 1.1 percent), as more folks get outpatient treatment instead. New technologies such as anesthesia-reversing drugs help make that possible.

But in a separate report, the same agency’s actuaries project that the Affordable Care Act will soon reverse our progress in taming spending growth. In 2014, when most of the law’s provisions take effect, spending will jump 7.4 percent — 2.1 percent faster than if ObamaCare hadn’t passed.

In other words, the government’s own actuaries warn that ObamaCare will cause the very “skyrocketing” costs we were told it would cure. They also say spending will continue to grow 6.2 percent a year through 2021, pushing health care to 19.6 percent of GDP by 2021.

Blame government programs for the increase. In 2011, federal, state and local government funding for health care grew 6.4 percent, while health spending by business, households and other private sources rose only 1.9 percent. Government will pay for over 49 percent of health care by 2021.

Sadly, spending will grow fastest on something that doesn’t provide care to the sick or even preventive care for the healthy: namely, on government health-care administration — bureaucrats and regulators telling doctors what to do.

This cost will soar from $29.6 billion in 2009 to $68 billion in 2021. That increase alone is enough to buy health plans for 2 million American families a year.

The projections from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services identify other problems ahead: One is an 8.5 percent rise in demand for physicians’ services in 2014, when coverage expands. Who’ll meet this demand? A 2010 report from the American Association of Medical Colleges warns of a 10 percent shortfall in doctor supply by 2020 (91,500 too few physicians).

The situation may be worse. A survey last October from the Physicians Foundation shows that many doctors are shortening hours and seeing fewer patients in response to mounting regulations, low pay and the impact of the new health law.

The report also warns that “some large employers with low-wage employees are expected to discontinue health-insurance benefits for their employees,” and pay a penalty instead. It’s no wonder: The ObamaCare law requires employers with 50 full-time employees to provide a package of “essential benefits” more costly than what many employers now offer. It will add $1.79 an hour to the cost of a full-time employee, calculates James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation.

That’s affordable when hiring lawyers and stockbrokers, but not waiters.

On Jan. 6, a Nebraska network of Wendy’s restaurants announced what many other employers are expected to say, that they are cutting back employees’ hours to part-time to avoid the mandate. Federal data suggest that fewer employees will get coverage on the job after the “employer mandate” goes into effect in 2014 than if it had not been enacted.

In short, Obama invented a crisis to get the Affordable Care Act passed — but now that law will indeed put many Americans in crisis.

Betsy McCaughey’s new book is “Beating ObamaCare: Your Handbook for Surviving the New Health Care Law.”

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As cause of woe$, Monica takes the cigar

John Crudele

It’s all Monica Lewinsky’s fault.

The former White House intern, a special friend of President Bill Clinton (who was curiously named “Father of the Year” last week by one publicity-seeking, morally tone-deaf organization), was the cause of our financial problems over the past six years.

OK, give me your full attention before you declare me legally insane, because I am half serious about this. You already know the oral history of the case. Lewinsky, then an eager 22-year-old graduate of Lewis & Clark College, got a little confused one day while at the White House. So instead of serving her country above and beyond the call of duty, she serviced Clinton above and below.

And she blew it for all of us.

The facts of the Lewinsky matter started coming out in 1998, and the affair eventually resulted in the impeachment of Clinton in 1999. He whined, he apologized to Hillary, and he maneuvered. And in the end the Senate gave Clinton a pass and let him serve out his term in office.

Clinton eventually made money writing books and doing whatever it is that ex-presidents do. And now Lewinsky is even said to be offering her story to the highest bidder since, I guess, interns-who-serviced-presidents-in-that-way aren’t on much of a career path.

The rest of us wish we had done as well as those two.

Anyone who was a grown-up back in 1998 — and I reluctantly count myself among them — remembers just how disruptive the impeachment was. And those of us who write about financial markets also understood back then the unique danger that came with the first president in 130 years potentially being thrown out of office.

The folks in Washington, in particular, knew the possible problems. The last thing this country needed in the midst of this political confusion was financial chaos. So it’s no wonder that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan — who was also handling the collapse of hedge fund Long Term Capital Management and the effects of financial problems in Russia — kept interest rates exceptionally low throughout the impeachment year and beyond.

The stock market thrived (for a while). The Internet bubble helped some people make lots of money, although others eventually lost fortunes. And — most important to the Lewinsky-is-to-blame thesis that I’m presenting here for the first time — the housing market roared thanks to the generosity of the Fed, which was like the person who put the teakettle on the stove and walked away for too long.

When Osama bin Laden struck in 2001, interest rates were already low because of the impeachment. But the Fed needed to push them down even more to contain any possible financial panic and keep the US economy going despite such a major disruption to the economy.

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Grand Central crisis

Steve Cuozzo

Microsoft just announced it’s moving its New York headquarters to a new office building at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street. Construction has started on a new home for Coach Inc. at Hudson Yards. And it’s old news that Conde Nast is moving to the World Trade Center. But which big companies are moving their front offices to Midtown’s fabled east side?

Not one — even though it should be the city’s most desirable neighborhood for corporate headquarters, with its transit links and unparalleled hotels, stores and restaurants.

That’s why East Midtown rezoning is desperately needed. The vast Grand Central district isn’t just “obsolescent”; it’s useless for companies wanting to move or grow and increasingly irrelevant overall. Without prompt attention, it will tragically devolve into a well-located back-office district.

Business Wire

Older buildings can’t beat this: A rendering of 250 West 55th — the kind of modern structure that’s stealing Midtown East’s snazziest tenants.

No government decision due this year matters as much as Midtown East rezoning. The stakes are huge: Will Manhattan retain its pre-eminent position among world business capitals? Or will institutionalized decay in its heart reduce it to also-ran status?

The long-overdue proposal from the Department of City Planning would allow construction of larger new buildings than are now permitted in a 78-block swath of the East 40s and 50s. Mayor Bloomberg wants it passed before he leaves office; the City Council must vote by October.

It’s a fourth-quarter, hail-Mary play after years of delay in bringing the area into the 21st century.

The Manhattan market draws its juice from new office towers that draw glamorous tenants seeking a showcase home with advanced electronic, security and environmental features.

Yet once-supreme Midtown East is frozen in aspic. Zoning written in 1961 made major new development there near-impossible. Existing buildings, now 66 years old on average and burdened with antiquated systems and cramped floor plates, are dinosaurs facing functional extinction in the digital age.

In much of the district, they can’t even be replaced with modern structures no larger than the ones there now. That’s because most of the buildings predate the 1961 rules, which shrank the size of permissible reconstruction. Existing structures were grandfathered in — not so, potential new ones.

As a result, leading companies in need of state-of-the-art new facilities are moving anywhere but along or astride the Park Avenue corridor that was once their first choice.

But council members are being furiously lobbied against the rezoning. Preservationists, “congestion”-phobes, advocates for “higher civic aspirations” and just plain obstructionists want to kill or dilute the measure — or at least delay it ’til Bloomberg’s gone.

They howl that larger, taller skyscrapers might, God forbid, cast shadows on or diminish the grandeur of masterpieces like the Chrysler and Seagram buildings and Grand Central Terminal.

Meanwhile, landlords who know how desperate the situation is pull their punches for fear of making the fading precinct sound even less appealing than so much of it has become.

Yes, a number of marquee headquarters tenants such as Citigroup remain. But vacancies are inching up toward 13 percent (as counted by real-estate brokerage CBRE). More ominously, corporate momentum of the kind that sets the pace for the commercial scene is all on the way out, not in.

City Hall warns that without change, tenants who’ve been attracted to East Midtown “in the past would begin to look elsewhere.” In fact, they’ve been going elsewhere for many years.

Time Warner moved to Columbus Circle, Hearst to Eighth Avenue and Bank of America to Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street. Law firm Proskauer Rose chose 11 Times Square, where Microsoft is headed as well.

Two large law firms chose brand-new 250 W. 55th St. One of them, Kaye Scholer, is leaving 425 Park Ave., its home of 55 years. The building is so antiquated, its owners plan to tear it down for a new one designed by architect Norman Foster. But because the relic is “overbuilt” by 1961 rules, they must keep 25 percent of its steel merely to put up a same-size new structure.

That will complicate and maybe compromise the effort. But it’s that, or wait four years for new zoning to kick in, if it’s approved.

The “sunrise provision” and other complexities with which the city hamstrung the rezoning proposal are needless. But even with flaws, it’s a must to liberate East Midtown from its straitjacket.

Until then, the area’s only hope is ambitious upgrade of older properties, as is happening at 280 Park Ave. But patch-and-fix isn’t the optimal future for a neighborhood that still embodies the magic of Manhattan as no other.

The goal is to reaffirm its premier status. It will only happen by allowing new landmarks — big, tall and worthy of their setting — to rise in the century ahead.

scuozzo@nypost.com

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NBC backs gun show

Nbc Sports, the home to gun-control advocate Bob Costas, is sticking with its commitment to be a sponsor of the National Shooting Sports Foundation 2013 SHOT Show, which is the largest US gun trade show, this week.

The NSSF is headquartered in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults in an elementary school on Dec. 14 with a semiautomatic rifle.

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ResCap creditor hope

Uncle Sam may make an additional payout to the unsecured creditors of bankrupt mortgage lender ResCap in order to fast-track the sale of its stake in Ally Bank, The Post has learned.

The size of the payout will be determined by an independent mediator, which was appointed recently by the bankruptcy judge overseeing the liquidation of Ally’s bankrupt ResCap unit.

The mediator was appointed at the request of Ally specifically to oversee the added payout, sources said.

The first meetings between Treasury-owned Ally, the ResCap unsecured creditors and the mediator took place this month, sources close to the situation said.

A group of hedge funds has been pushing Ally to quadruple its contribution to the ResCap reorganization from the $750 million now on the table to $3 billion. Treasury owns 74 percent of Ally, and some creditors believe Ally can pay them much more without impacting regulatory capital.

The bank (formerly known as GMAC) will likely put in more equity, sources said. ResCap has already sold its mortgage servicing business and mortgage portfolio.

Every additional dollar contributed by Ally to the ResCap reorganization is a dollar less in value taxpayer-owned Ally has to pay back Treasury. After a $200 million dividend payment this week, Ally — the black sheep of the auto-related bailouts — still owes taxpayers $11.3 billion of the $17.2 billion it took.

Ally, worth more than $10 billion, will sell itself or go public once it completes the restructuring. Washington is looking to fast-track its exit from Ally as credit markets are booming, making Ally more valuable, a source said.

An Ally spokesperson declined comment.

jkosman@nypost.com

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SAC pulls plug on Chi. shop

Hedge fund SAC Capital said yesterday it is closing down its Chicago office and laying off staff from the four portfolio teams that work there.

The Stamford, Conn.-based firm has $14 billion in assets with offices worldwide, including in New York, Hong Kong, London and Boston.

The company, which has recently drawn fresh scrutiny in the US government’s ongoing insider-trading probe, employs roughly 1,000 people around the world.

The government told SAC and its founder Steven A. Cohen late last year that it may bring civil fraud charges in relation to a case in which a former SAC fund manager has been charged with having traded in pharmaceutical companies Elan and Wyeth, now owned by Pfizer, with illegally obtained information about drug-trial results.

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Seabrook Sent Off

One more corrupt New York pol has a confirmed reservation at a federal lockup.

Ex-City Councilman Larry Seabrook (D-Bronx) was sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison and ordered to pay $619,715 in restitution. He’s to report March 8.

Frankly, he should consider himself lucky.

Last summer, the former powerbroker was found guilty of nine corruption counts; over a seven-year period, he used several nonprofit organizations under his control to funnel $2 million in taxpayer funds to his mistress and several relatives.

US Attorney Preet Bharara asked for a 7-plus-year sentence, but Judge Deborah Batts opted to take into account Seabrook’s public service (as opposed to the private graft?) in imposing the lesser sentence.

Dan Brinzac

Larry Seabrook

Either way, one wonders how much his fate ultimately changes things.

After all, he joins an All-Star squad of recently convicted downstate miscreants that includes ex-state Sens. Pedro Espada, Jr., Carl Kruger and Hiram Monserrate, plus Seabrook’s fellow ex-Councilman Miguel Martinez — to name a few.

With the notable exception of Kruger — guilty of outright bribery — all in some way were caught using nonprofits as their personal piggybanks.

“Reforms” supposedly will put an end to such chicanery. Be skeptical.

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Ex-Disney site in play for RL

Lois Weiss

BETWEEN THE BRICKS

The long vacant Disney store at 711 Fifth Ave. may soon be filled with Ralph Lauren clothing.

Several sources report a deal is being negotiated to bring RL’s preppie and all-American looks into 35,000 square feet at the Coca-Cola Building, named for the all-American beverage company that owns it.

Most of the 65,000 square feet that was the Disney Store — before Mickey decamped for Times Square — remains vacant. The Breguet shop of 3,000 square feet uses the old Mickey-and-friends character awning, which needed a variance to be installed.

Neither Lauren, which owns and rents along Madison Avenue and has other spaces in SoHo and on Bleecker Street, nor Jones Lang LaSalle’s spokespeople commented prior to press time.

*

Bids were due yesterday for the Sony Building at 550 Madison. Those previously outed and likely to have put in bids include the Rockefeller Group, owned by Mitsubishi Estate; Mitsui Fudosan America; Vornado Realty Trust; Boston Properties; Harry Macklowe; and Steven Witkoff; along with investors from the Middle East and Israel, China, Russia and Europe.

Locals, REITs, insurance companies and groups were teaming with capital from all over the world for the rare offering of a Class A Midtown office building, especially now that capital-gains rates are set for the moment. Douglas Harmon and his Eastdil Secured team are not responding to requests for comment on the bidders or bid amounts.

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Michael Kors Holdings has leased 15,000 square feet at 520 Broadway in SoHo between Spring and Broome streets. When it opens, sources said, the three-level store plus storage will become the brand’s new SoHo flagship. Right now, there is a Michael Kors store around the corner at 101 Spring St.

Gary Dana, Rick Dana and Adam Kramer of Dana Commercial Group at Douglas Elliman represented the tenant in the 15-year lease.

The space has 4,500 square feet on the ground and 5,000 square feet each on the second floor and concourse, along with underground storage of 2,500 square feet.

“We have been looking for them for a year in SoHo, and they wanted a big splash,” said Gary Dana.

Rodney Prop, chairman of Tall Prop Equities, negotiated on behalf of the Prop family partnership but declined comment.

Ground-floor rents in the area are now pushing into the $700s a square foot for midblock space. The entire space, however, had an asking rent on Costar of $4.556 million per year.

Construction will begin after the current tenant, Club Monaco, vacates in June.

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Douglas Durst has paid $18 million for a down-on-its-luck Times Square-area hotel right next to the fancy Lambs Club on a block where he already owns several parcels and is cobbling together a development site.

“It’s for the fifth generation,” he joked the other day of the future development, noting that the oldest person in the fifth generation is now 7 years old.

Durst’s new addition, the Crown Hotel at 136 W. 44th St., is rented to an agency funded by the city that has a year left on its lease.

Knowledge of Durst’s interest in the block made the transfer a fast off-market deal handled by Neal Sroka, Vincent Santoro and Suzan Kremer of Douglas Elliman on behalf of seller Steven Silberberg.

***

A boutique office building at 551 Madison on the northeast corner of 55th Street was just purchased for north of $125 million by an institutional investor advised by Cornerstone Real Estate Advisors, sources say.

Darcy Stacom, Bill Shanahan, and Paul Gillen of CBRE advised sellers LaSalle Investment Management. CBRE declined comment.

The 17-story property of 150,000 square feet has Lacoste as its largest tenant.

***

In another year-end deal, the Media Arts building at 311 W. 43rd St., west of Times Square in Clinton, where Hakkasan NY is located, was just sold to Atlas Capital’s Jeff Goldberger and Andy Cohen for $62.4 million.

Brian Ezratty and Peter Hauspurg of Eastern Consolidated represented the sellers, Richard Berry and Tony Zunino of Zuberry Associates, while Ezatty procured the buyers.

“We made a quick deal, but it was a securitized loan and they had to get it done in 45 days,” said Ezratty. He credited Cohen’s experience for the fast lender action.

The engineering firm Cooper Robertson is a tenant here.

Atlas is also part of the investment group that recently bought the St. Johns Center, the East Gate Tower Hotel on 39th Street and a Broome Street development site.

Lois@Betweenthebricks.com

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Mike Speaks the Truth

Mayor Bloomberg isn’t one for eating his own words, but he’d probably like to have back his weekend comparison of the United Federation of Teachers to the National Rifle Association.

Predictably, howls of outrage ensued — most of it of the manufactured variety, designed purely to deflect attention from the fact that the teachers’ union is once more hard at work protecting incompetent teachers at the expense of New York’s public-school pupils.

Mayor Mike needs to apologize, the union demands — and so he should.

But to the NRA, frankly.

Think what you will of the nation’s largest and most powerful gun lobby, at least it doesn’t purport to be something other than what it is.

Michael Bloomberg

As opposed to the UFT, which camouflages its contempt for the best interests of city kids with saccharine rhetoric and vicious TV attack ads aimed at Bloomberg.

The mayor last week opened fire on the UFT for abandoning talks aimed at establishing a teacher-evaluation regime based partly on student achievement, as required under a state law passed last June.

Never mind that city schools stand to lose $450 million in funding if a deal isn’t reached by Jan. 17. Reforming the city’s teacher-evaluation system will be a blessing for students citywide and for teachers, who deserve to be rewarded for their best work and better monitored and trained.

But UFT boss Mike Mulgrew has unilaterally ended months of negotiations and nearly ensured the money will be lost.

“It’s typical of Congress, it’s typical of unions . . . where a small group is really carrying the ball,” Bloomberg said on his Friday radio show. “The NRA is another place where the membership, if you do the polling, doesn’t agree with the leadership.”

Bloomberg rightly refuses to apologize.

Many of his would-be successors, however, are eagerly lining up to drink the UFT Kool-Aid.

The top four Democratic candidates for mayor have all joined a noxious petition attacking Bloomberg for his comments.

(Of course, they won’t say a word about how Mulgrew torpedoed the teacher-evaluation talks.)

The petition says Bloomberg “vilifies New York City teachers,” but he did the exact opposite, drawing a distinction between bosses like Mulgrew — who could not care less about New York’s kids — and the main body of teachers, which the mayor contends “doesn’t agree with the leadership.”

That’s the word straight from the mayor’s mouth: Don’t blame the educators, don’t blame City Hall — the schools are going to lose half a billion dollars because of Mike Mulgrew and the UFT.

Will the union apologize for that?

Fat chance.

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Sony and BMG have number for Parlophone

Sony Music is joining KKR-backed BMG Rights in a bid for Universal Music Group’s Parlophone record label assets. The bid is said to be around $500 million, sources said.

The teaming up of the two companies — just for the bid — has been under discussion for months, sources said, but just entered an offer in the past few days.

BMG is itself a partnership between private equity powerhouse KKR and German media conglomerate Bertelsmann.

Parlophone was founded in Germany while its UK offshoot made the company famous as a jazz label. Today, Parlophone houses artists such as Kylie Minogue and The Pet Shop Boys.

KYLIE MINOGUE


Parlophone asset.

If the joint bid is successful, partnership discussions have focused on splitting Parlophone assets with Sony taking front-line music — that is, current artists — while BMG takes the catalogue.

The news of Sony’s last-minute partnership with BMG was first reported by the Financial Times.

Vivendi’s Universal Music Group is selling EMI’s Parlophone, except its valuable Beatles assets, to satisfy European antitrust regulators after it bought EMI for $1.9 billion.

Len Blavatnik’s Warner Music Group, which passed on an earlier bid for EMI when bidding got too frothy, will compete with Sony-BMG, and with bids from a consortium fronted by “American Idol” creator Simon Fuller and Chris Blackwell, a music entrepreneur who founded Island Records, and Ron Perelman’s investment group, MacAndrews & Forbes.

A Sony spokeswoman declined to comment. Sources say that a winner should be confirmed by as early as next month. Universal has been working with Goldman Sachs to sell Parlophone and smaller related assets.

Sony was previously a partner with Bertelsmann in a venture named Sony BMG Music Entertainment. Sony bought out Bertelsmann’s 50 percent stake five years ago.

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Grads’ high score

“Grad tidings are sad tidings” (Dec. 26) takes note of the highly promising CUNY ASAP program at six community colleges, which has successfully boosted three-year graduation rates to substantially more than double the average at urban institutions.

This program has attracted national attention for its innovative curriculum, student advisement and support system and focus on earning degrees.

Efforts are already under way to expand ASAP, offering even greater numbers of associate-degree students the pathway to a successful collegiate experience.

Jay Hershenson, senior vice chancellor for university relations, CUNY

Pensions & power

While I firmly believe that our first responders deserve increased benefits for their heroic service at the World Trade Center on 9/11, The Post’s observation about the connection between lawmakers and the courts is extremely important (“Pension Pay Day,” Editorial, Dec. 30).

Our federal and state constitutions mandate a separation of powers to prevent abuse and to preserve liberty. That was severely compromised in 2009 when Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver engineered the appointment of his childhood crony, Jonathan Lippman, as the state’s chief judge.

With his compliant stooge at the helm of the courts, Silver controls two-thirds of state government, which solidifies his power and makes him more valuable to affluent supporters.

The issue of public-employee pensions is dwarfed by the fact that political opportunists like Silver and Lippman have brazenly corrupted state government for their own benefit at public expense, without repercussion or consequence.

Charles T. Compton, The Bronx

Papa’s pet problem

Why the surprise? We have a president who wants to control everything from medical care to gun ownership (“Washington vs. Hemingway Cats,” Jonah Goldberg, PostOpinion, Dec. 31).

Has President Obama ever been to Key West? Being dressed up is considered sneakers and no socks with formal wear.

Except for a random complainer, does he think those beautiful cats with extra toes — might we say “extraconstitutional” — must be caged for the safety of all?

John Brindisi, Manhattan

Bloomberg 2.0

With the mayor’s considerable influence behind her, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is already putting together her administration and making deals with NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly (“Christine’s Ray of Hope,” Jan. 2).

Her close friends are probably already calling her Mayor Quinn.

The last thing we need is for the mayor’s handpicked successor to continue his pattern of flouting our constitutional freedoms when they conflict with his personal opinions.

Quinn has already shown a penchant for this behavior by trying to shut down a Chick-fil-A restaurant because she disagreed with the views of the franchise’s president.

Mayor Bloomberg bought two terms, then stole another one. Now he wants to continue his reign by proxy.

Gary Taustine, Manhattan

Praise for a pundit

John Podhoretz outlines this conservative issue perfectly (“Conservatives Gone Wild,” PostOpinion, Jan. 4).

One could only wish for more sensible commentary of this sort, rather than the mindless bashing that is characteristic of most op-eds on the left and right.

Chris Armstrong, Tiburon, Calif.

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Hulu CEO Kilar boogies with a $6 million bonus

Hulu CEO Jason Kilar had millions of reasons to quit.

He bagged a $6 million year-end bonus — on top of the $40 million payout he received for his Hulu stake in October — before announcing his resignation late yesterday, The Post has learned.

While flush with cash, Kilar, 41, told his staff in an e-mail that he was leaving with a heavy heart, saying it’s “impossible to state in words how much Hulu means to me.”

Industry watchers expected Kilar to quit right after he landed the $40 million payout, which coincided with Providence Equity selling its stake in Hulu. But the additional $6 million was clearly worth the extra three months’ wait.

Reuters

Outta here: Hulu CEO Jason Kilar announced on his blog yesterday that he is leaving the popular video-streaming service, sparking speculation he will return to Amazon or join rival Redbox.

What’s unclear is where Kilar will land next. He’s been spotted making the rounds of top venture capital firms in recent weeks, including Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, Andreessen Horowitz and Greylock Partners.

Kilar is also tight with Jonathan Nelson, who has made a number of media-focused investments as the head of Providence.

In July, speculation swirled at the mogul retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, that Kilar was poised to join Facebook in a senior position, possibly taking over for COO Sheryl Sandberg.

There’s also chatter that Kilar might return to Amazon, where he was a senior vice president of software and one of CEO Jeff Bezos’ earliest hires.

No doubt Kilar will be in demand given his knowledge of both the technology and media worlds. He could prove particularly valuable to Amazon as it continues to roll out its own streaming video service to rival Netflix and Hulu.

Providence also kicked around a possible investment in Coinstar, which owns those Redbox DVD-rental kiosks, some months ago.

Coinstar’s CEO stepped down Thursday and will be replaced in March by the firm’s chief financial officer. Hiring Kilar could help jump-start Coinstar’s streaming video partnership with Verizon.

While Kilar figures out his next move, his exit poses some questions for owners Comcast, Disney and News Corp., including who will replace him. Kilar has clashed with Hulu’s big media backers at times over strategy, but he is widely credited with turning the site into a popular destination for TV viewing. (News Corp. also owns The Post.)

“There are some possible candidates” to replace him, said one source. They include: Ross Levinsohn, former interim CEO of Yahoo!; former NBCUniversal executive Jeff Gaspin; and Mark Shapiro, who has held top jobs at Six Flags and ESPN.

There’s also the question of whether Hulu’s partners will continue to invest in programming as terms tighten with traditional pay-TV distributors who want to be the sole conduit for all video online.

At this time last year, Kilar boasted Hulu would invest $500 million in programming in 2012. That claim is yet to be repeated this year, even though the firm collected almost $700 million in revenue in 2012. Kilar had been asking for $200 million to grow the business, sources said.

A rep for Hulu didn’t return a request for comment.

catkinson@nypost.com

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Deal makes Vanderbeek sole owner of Devils

Devils owner Jeff Vanderbeek has finally struck a deal to refinance the team’s debt and buy out his partners, ending months of wrangling over the cash-strapped club.

The agreement with lenders gives Vanderbeek two and a half years to stabilize the team’s finances and meet certain financial targets, or they have the right to remove him as owner, sources said.

He has a chance of hitting his targets but it is far from a sure thing, one source added. Much depends on the new collective bargaining agreement between the NHL and its players and if the team makes the playoffs. The Devils last year missed debt payments and the NHL had to advance the team money to keep it operating.

Vanderbeek is now sole owner after buying out Michael Gilfillan, who owned 47 percent, and Peter Simon, who owned the remaining 6 percent.

“Our future is now secure, and we can be confident of continued on-ice success,” Vanderbeek said.

While financial details weren’t disclosed, Vanderbeek personally put down much of the $20 million that went to pay overdue loans and get lenders to agree to a $160 million package that covers both the team and arena debt.

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Take that, Tina!

Andrew Sullivan, one of the most prolific and high-profile writers for the Daily Beast, is leaving the IAC/InterActiveCorp-owned news venture and starting his own subscription website.

Sullivan, who arrived from The Atlantic with much fanfare two years ago to write The Dish blog for Daily Beast Editor Tina Brown, said in a blog post that his contract ended on Dec. 31.

He and executive editors Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner formed their own company, Dish Publishing LLC. On Feb. 1, they will begin charging readers an annual subscription rate of $19.99 for access to the site, andrewsullivan.com.

WireImage

Just days after Tina Brown steered Newsweek into an online-only existence, she’s lost one of her biggest draws at the Daily Beast: journalist Andrew Sullivan.

The site will eschew ad dollars because of “how distracting and intrusive it can be, and how it often slows down the page painfully,” Sullivan wrote. “We felt more and more that getting readers to pay a small amount for content was the only truly solid future for online journalism.”

He thanked Brown and IAC/InterActiveCorp Chairman Barry Diller for hosting the Dish site.

“We’re sad to see him go, but we’re excited for him as he goes off to try something new,” said a Daily Beast spokesman.

The move is seen as a blow to Brown, who supervised the last print edition of Newsweek, which was folded into the Daily Beast, and laid off about 60 people on the 270-person staff. She will begin publishing a paid digital-only version starting this Friday for $29.99 a year.

“Her biggest mistake from the beginning was merging Newsweek into the Daily Beast, rather than vice versa,” said Samir Husni, a professor who founded the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi’s Meek School of Journalism. “She was willing to kill a brand that was 80 years old that every household in America knew for one that nobody knows.”

A spokesman for Daily Beast declined to comment.

kkelly@nypost.com

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