Back to start at 70 Pine St.

Steve Cuozzo

REALTY CHECK

Plans for 70 Pine St. are up in the air again even as the 66-story, Art Deco skyscraper finally appears headed for official city landmark designation.

The 1930 tower's new owners, a consortium led by Korea's Kumho Investment Bank (KIB), have nixed an earlier proposal to divide it into office floors at the base and condos above them to sell for $2,000 a square foot.

And New York developer Young Woo, widely reported to have "bought" the tower with KIB, has no equity in it at all, according to the bank -- and seems to have been reduced to a mere "adviser."

DOWNTOWN GEM: The Art Deco building at 70 Pine Street (above) is being considered by the Landmarks Preservation Commission for landmark status.

"We are fine-tuning our mixed-use development plan," KIB general manager Han J. Cho told The Post. He said restoration architects Beyer Blinder Belle have been tapped to work on a new proposal for 70 Pine, which is empty except for the Captain's Ketch restaurant and a few stores. A different source said prominent construction manager/architect Frank Sciame is also on board, perhaps as a joint-venture partner.

Cho also wanted to make clear that 70 Pine St. is wholly owned by the KIB-led group, which holds "100 percent," he said.

Woo "is one of the unit holders of the asset management company that we created to manage the building," Cho said. "They are just a part of the advisers."

Although developers identified as "owners" often hold smaller equity stakes in properties than their financial partners, it's less common, although not unheard of, for them to have none at all.

Woo has developed numerous residential and commercial projects in New York, including the "Sky Garage" condos at 200 11th Ave. He was widely reported to have purchased 70 Pine St. and a smaller adjacent building, 72 Wall St., from AIG in September 2009 for a lowball $150 million with a little help from KIB.

Woo announced the condos-and-offices scheme at a real estate forum a month later.

But after that, the conversion project at one of the city's most often photographed, iconic office buildings fell off the radar.

Although AIG finally moved out on Dec. 31, both Community Board 2 and the Downtown Alliance, which tend to be on top of everything in their territories, said they'd heard nothing recently.

The murkiness extends to the office-leasing plan. Online databases continue to list a Cushman & Wakefield team including Andrew Peretz as the leasing agent for nearly 500,000 square feet, nearly half of the tower's total floor space.

But asked whether the office space was still being marketed, Cho told us yesterday, "No. A master plan has not been finalized yet, so we're not talking to any commercial tenants." Peretz declined to comment.