Manhattan's Pier 57 will welcome a week-long pop-up market this Thursday, giving New Yorkers a glimpse of what the west side pier will become: a $200 million food and retail complex populated with local creative companies, dozens of which will set up shop in shipping container Incuboxes. Developer Youngwoo & Associates announced the complex's first three anchor tenants?a spa and restaurant by Andre Balazs Properties, a boutique by Opening Ceremony, and a climbing gym by Brooklyn Boulders?and revealed the development's new name: SuperPier. Yes, really. According to a press release, Youngwoo pulled the moniker from a 1952 Popular Mechanics article that dubbed the pier such because it was "an engineering marvel."
The Times has all the details on the spaces of the three anchor tenants, the most interesting of which belongs to Brooklyn Boulders. The group will turn the pier's three enormous hollow caissons (the engineering feat that garnered the SuperPier name) into an underwater climbing gym, believed to be the first in the world. Brooklyn Boulders may also create an outdoor ice-climbing wall.
Andre Balazs took space on the second floor, also home to the Asian night-market style food emporium. Balazs wants to build a spa akin to those in Baden-Baden Germany, complete with a pool, beach, and restaurant. The sprawling space will have 16,000-square-feet outside, plus 12,750-square-feet inside; it will not be under the Standard brand. "We have barely started the design process, but if you imagine the Standard Spa in Miami, that is the direction we are going," Balazs told the Times. "There won't be thumping music or a club atmosphere, but the tranquillity and calm and freshness of the Standard pool."
Opening Ceremony has not yet decided how much space they will take, but unlike most other permanent retail tenants, the store will be located in a series of Incuboxes. Starting tomorrow, the company is hosting a pop-up market at the pier to coincide with Fashion Week. Most of the shipping container spaces will be marketed to smaller businesses and start-up companies; thirty percent of the boxes will have one-year leases, while the rest will range from two to ten years.
Construction of the LOT-EK-designed complex will begin next month, but there are still a few undecided elements. The developer has approval for a footbridge over the West Side Highway to link the pier's two-acre rooftop park with the city, but Youngwoo would like to see that idea go even further?he hopes to expand the bridge to connect to the High Line, but that requires a whole slew of other approvals. SuperPier should be ready for the masses by spring 2015.
· Pier's Developer Looks for a Creative Tenant Mix [NYT]
· Pier 57 coverage [Curbed]
Loading comments...