South Street scores
HOWARD Hughes Corp. has landed a big fish as its South Street Seaport’s culinary anchor — JeanGeorges Vongerichten.
The great chef and his business partner Phil Suarez have signed a leasepartnership contract with NYSElisted Hughes to launch two major Seaport projects — a 40,000 squarefoot, seafoodthemed marketplace inside the landmarked Tin Building and a 10,000 squarefoot restaurant on a rebuilt Pier 17.
Vongerichten’s involvement “is a done deal, signed,
sealed and delivered,” exuberant Hughes Chief Executive David R. Weinreb told us. He said the new Pier 17, now under construction, is on track to open in mid2017.
The timetable for the Tin Building — which stands between the FDR Drive and the pier site — is slightly less certain, but Weinreb said, “Our goal is to get that building open by the end of 2017.”
Vongerichten called both portions “an amazing project and we are confident about 2017.”
Hughes had said earlier it would create a gourmet emporium for the Tin Building, which raised the prospect of another clumsily curated hall filled with taco, ramen noodle and meatball stands.
But Vongerichten brings vastly greater local cred to the whole Seaport project and a muchneeded foodie mecca to downtown’s underserved East River waterfront.
“I am honored to be part of the catalytic transformation,” said Vongerichten, who owns 10 New York restaurants, including his flagship JeanGeorges at Columbus Circle.
The three Michelinstarred chef first bonded with Weinreb when the Hughes exec dined at his restaurant Mercato in Shanghai last winter. “He told me about the project and really convinced me,” Vongerichten said.
Vongerichten saw it as a way to bring back the flavor of the old Fulton Fish Market, which moved to the Bronx years ago. Suarez recalled that Vongerichten had loved going to the Fulton Market “three or four times a week.”
The Seaport marketplace will not be ethnically focused like Frenchthemed Le District or Italianinspired Eataly, but simply built around seafood. Retail counters will be mixed with communal tables and noshing counters for “chowders, raw bars, sushi, shrimp,” Vongerichten said.
The Pier 17 restaurant, on the second floor, will include a 2,500 squarefoot alfresco patio facing the Brooklyn Bridge. The atmosphere won’t be fine dining but casual along the lines of ABC Kitchen and ABC Cocina.
Suarez said he and Vongerichten had also been approached to do a project on downtown’s Hudson River side, “But we decided it was getting saturated” with recent and planned eateries at Brookfield Place, the World Trade Center and along Broadway.
Hughes is transforming the Seaport from its 1980s, touristoriented incarnation into a residential, cultural and leisure complex attuned to lower Manhattan’s swelling residential population and role as a hub for media and creative fields as well as finance.
Pier 17 is a centerpiece of Hughes’ $1.5 billion master plan for the Seaport, which is also to include a marina, a widened esplanade, shops, arts studios, a revitalized Seaport Museum, affordable housing, as well as a controversial condo tower.
An iPic Entertainment cinema complex is on track to open in the Fulton Market building in 2016. Most other project pieces have received all necessary public approvals.
However, the Tin Building work needs the blessings of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Economic Development Corp. The decayed, lowrise structure must be reinforced and moved 33 feet east to take it out of the floodplain to protect it from future surges like Superstorm Sandy. Inaccurate recent reports had claimed the Tin Building needed to be demolished, but EDC rep Kelly Magee clarified, “It is only the cooler area, once used for coldfood storage, that is subject to demolition. The balance of the structure will then be assessed to determine the extent of any additional measures needed.”