Daily News from New York, New York • 100

Shift would open way for hi-rise fl ruffes t-fA ti -I Hwi 1 i 1 WMzZP? fcb A sSW ITT s- -fe1 vT "Cvv TOM MONASTER DAILY NEWS By OWEN MORITZ Urban AHatrt Editor The Russian Tea Room is contemplating a move next door to a city-owned lot adjoining Carnegie Hall in a real-estate maneuver that could change the face of W. 57th St. If the move comes to pass, it would open the way for a 51-story tower that could benefit Carnegie Hall, the Tea Room and reclusive real-estate developer Harry Macklowe. The Tea Room, at 150 W. 57th St, has long been under pressure to sell because it occupies a pivotal spot between Carnegie Hall to the west and a Macklowe-owned site to the east.

Owner Faith Stewart-Gordon reportedly rejected a $12 million offer last year. Carnegie Hall has vacant city-owned property behind and alongside it that is used as a parking lot but is for sale. Carnegie Hall itself is an official landmark that can't be touched, but sale of the vacant land would yield welcome revenue to it and the city. Macklowe owns property just to the east of the Tea Room, for which he paid $20 million and has begun excavating the site in preparation for construction. UNDER CURRENT zoning, Macklowe and Carnegie Hall are limited in what their land can command because both sites are narrow.

It would be different if either acquired the 25-by-200-foot Tea Room site or at least its air rights. And were the three sites combined, the land could yield a 51-story building with 1 million square feet, about 60 of the square footage of the Empire State Building, according to insiders. No one Russian Tea Room on W. 57th St. Is sandwiched between two construction sites.

That's Carnegie Hall at right A spokesman for Carnegie Hall says there have been conversations with the Tea Room but points out that requests for proposals for the parking lot have been circulated among would-be builders. "We get only one chance a lifetime to build," says the spokesman. "We're taking our time. We want a building of the highest caliber." The discussions also shed light on real-estate doings in New York. Faith Stewart-Gordon has brought in prominent attorney William Shea and consulted with George Klein, the fast-rising developer who has been named the conditional builder for the $1.6 billion Times Square redevelopment Carnegie Hall is understood to be talking to George Kaufman, an owner of the Astoria Film Studios.

doubts it would be a commercial sue- -cess on a Gold Coast boulevard like 57th St The Tea Room is, of course, a well-known gathering spot that was the backdrop in two recent movies, "Toot-sie" and "Unfaithfully Yours." "This is the most successful individually owned restaurant in the world," says James Stewart-Gordon, a retired Reader's Digest editor. One fear of selling, he says, is that the place's tradition would be lost in a move elsewhere. Still, the Tea Room owners recently paid $140,000 to a tenant to vacate a rent-controlled apartment on an upper floor of the restaurant This now gives the restaurant the leverage to do what it wilL STEWART-GORDON says his wife would consider an offer of $15 million for the site, provided the restaurant is able to replicate itself next door. This would mean a free-standing building or, as part of any high-rise, with its own entrance. "Our plans are somewhat flexible," says Stewart-Gordon.

Macklowe, 47, who ended negotiations with the Tea Room in a huff last year, has refused to return phone calls. But he has filed papers for a 12-story' building on the excavated site. This could presumably be expanded, were he to acquire the Tea Room site. He has already paid $6.2 million for the air rights from the building next to him at 140 W. 57th St 3 Was caught kicking up her heels 3 Wf4AT PO YOU MEAN, OF TUB Operator: "What are you trying to do, commit suicide?" Caller: "No! I'm trying "to exercise." Operator: "Okay, yoti have those gravity boots on?" Caller: "Yes, yes, yes." Operator: "Okay, ma'am.

Ma'am? I'll request a scout car, just calm down. Calm down, ma'am I'm sending a scout car and EMS (Emergency Medical Service). Watch out for them." Caller: "I can't, I'm tied up in the back bedroom." OPERATOR: "IS THERE anybody else in the house with you?" Caller: "Noooooo! I can't get dooooown." (Hangs up.) Operator (to herself): "Damn." (Hangs up.) Six minutes later, the woman called again and screamed at a different operator. Caller: "The circulation is being cut off in my legs." The operator confirmed help was on the way. The woman let out a whining scream for almost 20 seconds then stopped abruptly.

Operator: "Hello, ma'am?" Caller: "Okay, forget it. I just got down." She did not explain how she got down. Detroit (UPI) A screaming woman trapped hanging upside-down in a pair of gravity inversion boots made a frantic call to Detroit police to ask for help from a pair of slightly confused emergency operators. The woman, dangling from gravity inversion boots footgear believed by some health-faddists to help backaches and various other ills lunged for her telephone to call a bemused 911 emergency operator when she could not get down. Excerpts of the conversation, taped at 9:56 p.m.

Wednesday, appeared in yesterday's Detroit Free Press as follows: Caller: "Help!" Operator: "What's the problem." CALLER (SCREAMING): "I'm hanging upside-down in a pair of inversion boots, and I can't get down." Operator: "Now, what's happening? Someone's breaking into the house?" Caller: "No! I'm hanging upside-down in a pair of inversion boots and I can't get down!" "You're hanging upside-down?" Caller: "Inversion boots! I can't get down." Operator: "Wait, wait, where are you hanging upside-down from?" Caller: "The bedroom in the back." to CO -9.