Metro

Realty bigs taking up ‘arms’

It’s pushback time for the real-estate industry on the Kingsbridge Armory.

Steve Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said the industry intends to inform residents of the harm done when the City Council rejected a deal to transform the long-vacant Bronx armory into a $310 million mall.

“We will clearly be reminding people what’s been lost as a result of this decision,” Spinola said, mentioning a billboard campaign as a possibility. “Every couple of months, we’ll be calculating how many people don’t have work, how much it’s costing the city to keep the armory from deteriorating, how much is being lost in taxes.

“We would like to remind Borough President [Ruben] Diaz and other people who produced this what the costs will be. We ought not let it be forgotten what we threw away.”

The council voted 45-1 last Monday to kill the deal after the Bronx delegation couldn’t come to terms with the administration on its demand that every retailer in the government-subsidized mall be required to pay a “living wage” of $10, plus $1.50 in benefits.

Diaz all but dared Spinola to come after him.

“If people who’ve done well in the real-estate community feel a need to attack me, that’s an attack I’m willing to take,” he said.

david.seifman@nypost.com