New York-based Vornado Realty Trust, a publicly traded real estate firm, buys control of the recently shuttered Filene's department store. Vornado apparently plans a development of the prime spot at 426 Washington Street.

Vornado demolishes much of the store, leaving only the Daniel Burnham-designed building in place (Filene's had grown from that building to include four different properties). Then, together with a local developer as junior partner, Vornado sets about planning a tower of hotel rooms, offices, and retail. It is to be one of the biggest projects in modern Boston. Everyone loved it.

Lehman Brothers' September 2008 collapse plunges the nation's economy into recession. Financing for major real estate projects, already teetering, plunges as well. Vornado puts its Filene's site plans on ice--ostensibly because of the calamitous financial economic situation. The Filene's site gapes empty from 2008 through 2009, into 2010.

During a speech at Columbia University, Steven Roth, Vornado's brashly outspoken chairman, brags about how he left the site of the current Bloomberg LP building in Manhattan empty for years to entice construction incentives from the government. "Why did I do nothing? Because I was thinking in my own awkward way, that the more the building was a blight, the more the governments would want this to be redeveloped; the more help they would give us when the time came. And they did."

The New York media picks up on Roth's comments at Columbia and carries them to Boston, where Mayor Tom Menino blew a gasket. Menino sees a revitalization of Downtown Crossing as vital to his legacy, and did not appreciate Roth's apparent shell game to wring incentives from his administration and perhaps other government bodies, too. "Admitting that you embraced a deliberate policy of long-term blight, at a major commercial location in New York City, exhibits a callous disregard for the well-being of the city and its people," Menino thunders in a public letter to Roth. The mayor instructs the Boston Redevelopment Authority to look at seizing the Filene's site through eminent domain.

Four years after creating a gaping hole in Downtown Crossing's ground, Vornado sells full control of the site to Millennium Partners, another Manhattan-based firm. Millennium was best known in Boston for having built at the turn of the century the Ritz-Carlton, the city's first condo-hotel hybrid. The project, which is visible from the Washington Street sidewalk opposite Millennium Tower, delivered hotel service to condos that might each sell for $1,000 or more a square foot. These were scandalously high sums for Boston, and all the more so because the Ritz-Carlton sat on the edge of what until recently had been the Combat Zone. Millennium Partners was also at the time preparing to construct what it would call Millennium Place in Downtown Crossing (pictured). The 256 units in that project, which opened its sales office in October 2012 and sold out by February 2014, would routinely trade for north of the $1,000-a-square-foot benchmark the Ritz-Carlton had set a decade before.

Millennium Partners announces initial plans for what will be Boston's tallest residential tower and third-tallest tower overall, behind the Pru and 200 Clarendon: 606 feet, or roughly 55 stories. It is much taller and bigger (with around 500 units) than anything Vornado imagined for the site. According to the developer, Millennium Tower will include 230,000 square feet of "active and varied retail shopping on the lower floors reaching across the entire site." Target's even a possibility, apparently which means Downtown Crossing's really arrived. Handel Architects, the same firm that was behind the Ritz-Carlton, will design the new tower.

Mayor Menino joins Millennium Partners executives to officially break ground on what is now slated to be a 625-foot, 56-story tower of 450 luxury condos. That last facet is especially important: Gone are the apartments from Millennium Tower. Luxury condos will now dominate it. Also, the city will provide $7,800,000 in tax breaks over 13 years to speed the project's development.

A condo taking up the entire top floor of the under-construction Millennium Tower in Downtown Crossing is listed for $37,500,000. If it gets anywhere near that amount, it will constitute the biggest home sale, condo or otherwise, in Boston history. The unit will unfold over 13,000 square feet at the pinnacle of the now 685-foot spire. It will also include a 2,500-square-foot deck and basically come as an unfinished shell for the moneyed buyer to mold. The $37.5M price tag is the most gobsmacking figure yet in Millennium Tower's brief sales history. So far contracts have been signed for 150 of Millennium Tower's 442 units. Prices range from $850,000 for a 759-square-foot 1-BR to 17 penthouses starting at $7,600,000 for a 3,300-square-foot one.

The massive crane being used for Millennium Tower becomes the tallest structure in Boston history (aside from antennae), reaching 885 feet. Millennium Partners announces that the tower will top off before the end of the month.

Old Navy announces it will open a two-level store at the Millennium Tower complex, which also includes the refurbished Burnham Building. The approximately 29,000-square-foot lease fills up the 335,000 square feet of retail there. Other tenants include Primark, Roche Bros., PABU, and Caffe Nero.

Billionaire investor (and Cohasset native) John Grayken is revealed as the buyer of the 13,000-square-foot Millennium Tower penthouse listed for $37,500,000. Grayken, who also owns an island off his hometown as well as a mansion in London and a country estate in England, apparently paid more than $30,000,000 for the spread, but less than its $37.5M listing. It will still be the biggest home sale in Boston history when it closes. There’s a catch: Grayken will very likely not live in Millennium Tower full-time. Why? Because he renounced his U.S. citizenship years ago for tax purposes and has an Irish passport (and a British wife). And the U.S. can tax the worldwide income of those ex-citizens who spend an average of 120 days annually in the country. In other words, to keep avoiding U.S. taxes, Grayken, who made his fortune in delinquent loans and distressed properties, has to be careful about how much time he spends at his new palace in the sky.

Deeds for the first 47 units to officially close at Millennium Tower are filed with Suffolk County on July 14. They range from $875,000 for a 16th-floor unit to $8,700,000 for one on the 45th floor. An executive with Millennium Partners tells the Boston Globe that about three-fourths of buyers so far hail from the Boston area.