BETWEEN THE BRICKS.

How many judges does it take to build an office tower? Only one if he orders it.

We're not sure if it only took one judge or dozens of them moaning and groaning about their lack of space to get things moving, but sure 'nuf, our Jay Street Sleuths say Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has given the nod to a long approved plan to provide Brooklyn magistrates with more fortifications, provided the Mayor "gets to cut the ribbon,, before he cuts out of town.

The city once owned the site known as 12 MetroTech Center, a/k/a 330 Jay Street, but it was traded to Forest City Ratner years ago, went through the ULURP process for an office building but has been talked about as part of the overall court expansion plan for the past decade.

Of course, even now, the masterful mayor has to promenade carefully between Bruce Ratner, who put MetroTech on the map along with its many employers, and Joshua Muss, who spent years developing the finally open and incredibly successful Brooklyn Marriott and Renaissance Plaza office tower that is now home to the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, among other tenants.

Neither the hotel, Muss nor Metro Tech's corporate tenants have been too thrilled with the "idea of people being paraded in handcuffs" to the courtrooms. "Yes, it's an exaggeration," said our source, "but they don't think it's the right atmosphere for the site."

Giuliani, we hear, has still agreed to move forward with the plan to sequester the jurists and the court users into most of the brand new, 1.1 million to 1.3 million square-foot tower that Ratner's Forest City will build on the vacant parcel, just northwest of the Renaissance Plaza. and across the wide street from the current State Supreme Courthouse on Adams Street

The proposed 32-story project will provide enough space to enlarge the Supreme Court from 41 courtrooms to 49, while the Family Courts would expand from 14 to 22 courts, and from five to eight hearing rooms.

Once the Family and Supreme Courts move into the Perkins Eastman redesigned tower, there will be about 225,000 square feet left over for commercial private users, expected to be mostly lawyerly or corporate types.

The original Skidmore Owings Merrill plan had a public parking garage, but with the hotel parking next door and security concerns, it has been-eliminated this time around.

Nearby, the money to build the new U.S. Federal Courthouse, however, was stalled so long it was under-budgeted by the GSA and is stalled again, so those judges are said to be "tearing their hair out" from their own lack of office space.

At Muss's project, the Marriott is revpared up with weekend rates quoted at $179 - if they only had space - and the catering hall has become the pride of the Big Bad Borough. Marriott might have to just swallow more of the few available lower office floors to accommodate the crowds.

The new courthouse and office project would also provide succor to the voters and corporate tenants of Downtown Brooklyn from the higher-office hungry Mayor. The area has lately felt a frosty nip as the sun sets over New Jersey's hard won, lower-taxed office users, along with Downtown Manhattan's incentive plan takers.

"By the time this steel is up, there will be no space available in Brooklyn and Forest City will be in a very strong place to rent this space without any problem," said Glenn Markman, a broker with Grubb & Ellis, when advised of the dusted off plans. "There is that much activity."

Neither Muss nor a Forest City Ratner spokesperson returned calls before deadline.

At deadline, the City Council was still taking testimony on the sprinkler issue, which appears likely to be melded into a law in some form for both new buildings and retrofits.

The new buildings will probably have to sprinkler apartments and hallways, but the fire stairs are a question mark.

Buildings spending somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of their true market value on renovations will have to install sprinklers. The Fire Department is pulling for the former number; the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) for the latter, which is what was used to implement the new earthquake codes.

For current buildings over seven stories, it seems likely they will have to be outfitted with an inside apartment public address system that might become a retrofit of a current intercom, and would be used to provide instructions to tenants.

The Fire Dept. does not want tenants opening their apartment doors into a smoke-filled hallway to hear a scratchy hall installed speaker tell them to remain in their apartments. This retrofit will be required within the next few years, possibly by 2002.

REBNY will be generally supporting the bills, but asking for longer time periods, higher retrofit investments, the ability to have these covered under MCI's and J-51s, and to look at the entire building code with an eye on allowing replacement materials such as PVC pipe in plumbing installations to help reduce overall building costs.

"It's not the cost of the sprinklers, but the high cost of building in New York that is the issue," said REBNY President Steven Spinola. Stay tuned...