From Barclays Center to Sandy, a year of extremes

HIGHS & LOWS:That $68 million bet on luxe condos in the Woolworth Building (above) dramatically overshadows the ubiquitous LOOK! on Manhattan crosswalks that help pedestrians avoid injury from oncoming cyclists .

To start the New Year, we present our Golden Bricks to the best and worst of the city slickers:

Best Present Award: Vornado’s Twin Tornados Steve Roth and Michael Fascitelli (inset top right) turned their focus on more street retail and snagged the Marriott Marquis retail and LED signage and possibly the theater when its lease runs out — so maybe Tony Award-winning Mrs. Daryl Roth can have her own Broadway theatre.

Grinch Award: Gary Barnett (inset lower right) of Extell Development for convincing Nordstrom to buy into his spot on gritty West 57th Street so he can develop the tallest tower in the US while being the Grinch that continues to tie up the garage under Vornado’s future development that would block some of his tower’s views.

Stealth Deal of the Year Award: Mark Siffon of Maefield Development bought up Times Square sites and then had Howard Michaels of the Carlton Group bring in heavy weights Steve Witkoff, Howard Lorber’s Vector Group and Michael Ashner’s Winthrop Realty Trust to buy the 701 Seventh Ave. development site, with Siffon keeping a stake.

Crane Accident of the Year Award: Barnett’s Extell Development’s crane that bent over backwards in freak winds at the top of the 90-story One57 when work was nearly completed, shutting down not only the street and nearby buildings but all the utilities for fear the section would fall and pierce the roadway along with underground gas lines. In the end, no one was hurt.

Five & Dime Deal Award: Ken Horn’s Alchemy’s $68 million bet on the top 30 floors of the century-old Woolworth Building where he wants to develop 40 luxury residences crowned with an 8,000 square-foot five-story penthouse. In February, the Skyscraper Museum opens an exhibition to celebrate The Woolworth Building @ 100.

Control Your Client Award: To Lisa Kiell for finally getting waffling Microsoft to sign a lease somewhere, anywhere. The 230,000-square- foot deal was inked at SJP Properties’ 11 Times Square, which was coincidently repped by colleagues at Jones Lang LaSalle. Mazel Tov.

What Coulda Been A Contender Award: To Boston Properties Veep Robert Selsam, who reminded folks at an AREW lunch that 250 W. 55th St. had been originally designed as the city’s first twisting tower — but they changed their minds.

Arena Bet Pays Award: To Forest City Ratner for pulling off the now-beloved Barclays Center even if Bruce Ratner had never liked basketball.

Yards of Gold Award: To Stephen Ross and Oxford for sticking with the mud and starting work on the Coach Building.

Retail Gold Award: Jeff Sutton for recognizing that retail space is paved with gold and combining 1552 Broadway with Jeff Gural’s adjacent 1560 Broadway and convincing L’Express to rent that space rather than the Durst’s ESPN Zone, which was nevertheless soon scooped up by H&M.

Olympic Gold Crown Award: To Haim Chera for working with the Onassis Foundation over several years to win the retail at Olympic Tower without having to also take on their oil tankers.

Braveheart Award: To David Levinson of L&L Holdings for proposing to tear down most of 425 Park Ave. and rebuild it with a design by Lord Norman Foster long before the city approves new East Side Zoning.

Google Effect Market of the Year Award: To Midtown South for becoming the place tech companies want to locate.

Greedy Market of the Year Award: To Midtown South for raising rents so much because companies wanted to be there that Jones Lang LaSalle reports Class A rents rose from $58.92 a square foot at the end of 2011 to $70.15 at the end of 2012 — bringing year end vacancy rates from 6.5 percent to 9.6 percent as companies looked elsewhere.

Screwing Up the Street Award: To DOT Commish Janette Sadik-Kahn for making life scarier for drivers by handing over too much square footage to bikers while not curbing pedestrians and leaving major roadways feeling like a roller coaster ride.

You Light Up My Life Award: To Malkin Properties for the Empire State Building which “led” the pack with new energy-efficient LED lighting and now features even more colorful light displays.

Downer Drowner Award: Sandy the Hurricane for burying the city in record flood waters, destroying thousands of homes, businesses and offices while leaving the southern and Downtown coastal portions of the city in the dark and cold and without phone service.

Riders on the Storm Rescue Award: For all the first responders, including those brave souls in the NYPD, FDNY and EMS, who trundled up and down many flights of stairs to retrieve people during the dark nights and days of Sandy and then spent all their days off shoveling muck and fixing other people’s homes.

Donation Award: To the Village of Sleepy Hollow and its all-volunteer Fire Department for driving its old pumper truck filled with supplies to Broad Channel’s all-volunteer department, whose own truck was destroyed in Sandy, and transferring it to them for $1.

Find the Heroes Award: To the Downtown Alliance, which embedded 181 black granite plaques in the sidewalks along Broadway’s mile-long Canyon of Heroes to create a “Walk of Fame” that commemorates all the ticker tape parades and makes millions more tourists stop in their tracks.