If 2009 was the year the city finally voted on a proposal to redevelop the enormous and vacant Kingsbridge Armory, then 2010 was the year everyone tried to figure out the significance of the City Council deciding overwhelmingly, one year ago, to kill a Bloomberg-backed plan to mold the Armory into a shopping mall.

The Armory plan fell apart when activist groups and elected officials demanded the Armory mall provide living wage jobs ($10 an hour, plus benefits or $11.50 an hour without) in exchange for the developer, Related Companies, receiving tens of millions of dollars in city tax breaks and subsidies. Related wouldn’t budge, Bloomberg scrapped a compromise effort and the Council thwarted the mall plan, twice voting almost unanimously to stop it.

Related officials repeatedly said they would not be opposed to guaranteeing living wages if it was the law of the land in New York City. But the Big Apple has been slow, compared to other large cities like Los Angeles, to legislate or attach any strings that might impede development deals. Development is good for development’s sake, Bloomberg has long proselytized.

But the Armory fight proved development wasn’t enough to satisfy community activists, job advocates and Bronx elected officials. It also proved the city needed to formalize its policy regarding job creation and city subsidies.

In the beginning of 2010, Bronx Council members Oliver Koppell and Annabel Palma introduced the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act. It would require developers to provide living wage jobs at completed projects that receive more than $100,000 in city subsidies and/or tax breaks.

The Act, with backing by the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance (KARA) and the city’s biggest retail workers union, gained the support of 28 of the Council’s 51 members, meaning it could pass, but wouldn’t withstand an inevitable mayoral veto — which would require a two-thirds majority, or at least 33 solid supporters, to overturn.

It will not pass this year, but the Act will be re-introduced early in the coming year and the entire Bronx delegation (minus fence-sitting east Bronx representative James Vacca) is in full support of it.

In other Armory fallout policy news, a task force convened by new City Comptroller John Liu came up with a list of recommendations that would help formalize the city’s Community Benefits Agreement process instead of dealing with it on a case by case basis.

Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. also convened a big name-laden task force of his own to come up with recommendations on how to best redevelop the Armory. Diaz’s task force was going to release its recommendations by the end of this year, but will hold off until the spring while a group of New York University graduate students creates its own recommendations based on research done for a Capstone project.