Manhattan: there is a visionary project planned for the far west side of 15th Street: Pier 57. The developer behind it, Young Woo, calls it SuperPier and describes it as a powerhouse for all creative people in one location.
In 2015, a multi-tiered, 560,000-square-foot retail complex is slated to open on the property.
To refresh your memory, Woo is the guy behind the iconic Sky Garage, a luxury condo in Chelsea where each unit comes with a personal car elevator.
Woo envisions the SuperPier as a place where a Williamsburg chef making the world’s smallest donuts sets up shop next to a Japanese entrepreneur hawking square watermelons.
When finished, the floating complex will feature 430 uniquely decorated shipping crates, each roughly 160 square feet (some of which will be subdivided or combined) to create hundreds of retail “incubators” with low rent, and non-traditional leases. (Lease terms range from one to 10 years, at prices as low as $3,000 to $5,000 a month). There will also be 20 larger spaces, ranging from 3,000 to 20,000 square feet with 28-foot ceilings and custom-designed configurations that will be offered under longer lease terms. (Still, they will be priced at about $100 to $150 a square foot, compared with $400 to $550 in the nearby Meatpacking District.)
The first anchor tenants for the larger spaces have been already announced: a Riverfront Spa and Beach Club by hotelier Andre Balazs, the trendy clothier Opening Ceremony, and a Brooklyn Boulders rock climbing facility.
The Pier57 idea stemmed from a discussion Woo had with a scientist at Bell Labs, who said he expected shopping malls to disappear in the next 10 years. At the same time, the consultants he spoke to stressed that the flood of young adults into the cities was only going to increase.
What was needed, Woo concluded, was a new kind of marketplace to cater to these individuals — an urbanized version of Main Street, where the young and talented could hawk their wares.
To provide that, however, required a new business model that eliminated the barriers to entry.
The target tenants for the space will likely be: hip, local entrepreneurs; global retailers with unique brands that are having a hard time breaking into the U.S. because they lack the credit and resources; established brands looking to try new things; and online companies looking for small brick-and-mortar outposts.