Barriers to Come Down, Stores to Start Opening at Brookfield Place
Rendering by Brookfield Office Properties
On March 26, the doors to many new restaurants and stores in Brookfield Place will finally begin to open.
The retail roster includes 25 shops—mostly high-end sellers of clothing and accessories—with staggered openings through the spring and into mid summer, according to David Cheikin, Brookfield Office Properties’s vice president for leasing, who last month gave Community Board 1 a rundown of the scheduled openings. Remaining under construction until later in the year, he said, are Burberry and Ferragamo.
The “largest and most complicated to build,” Cheikin noted, is the 85,000-square-foot, three-story Saks Fifth Avenue, which is not scheduled to be ready until spring of next year.
Aside from the 14 food stalls at Hudson Eats, Brookfield Place will house three new restaurants, including L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, expected to open by the fall, Parm, a casual eatery and sandwich shop serving Italian-American food, with an anticipated April opening, and Amada, specializing in tapas, to be ready by the end of summer, at the earliest.
Le District, a food market run by restaurateurs Howard and Peter Poulakakos, is scheduled to launch in April.
Cheikin said there are still “six or eight” spaces that have yet to be rented.
The future is uncertain for Cobbler Express Shoe Repair, one of the World Financial Center’s original small businesses when the complex opened in 1988, and one of the first to return after Sept. 11, 2001.
“We would love to say we have a spot for him,” Cheikin said, “but I don’t want to be here and tell you something that I can’t live up to.”
In advance of the first store openings, most of the construction barriers—long a source of inconvenience for people making their way through the Brookfield complex—will come down. The bridge that now connects 200 and 225 Liberty Street is slated to be rebuilt to make it more energy-efficient, Cheikin said.
Here is a lineup of the new tenants:
Clothing and accessories shops: Hermès Paris, Salvatore Ferragamo, Zegna, Scoop NYC, theory, Judith & Charles, Michael Kors, Calypso St. Barth, Bonobos, Aspinal of London, Diane von Furstenberg, Paul Smith, J. Crew, Vince., Satya Jewelry, Vilebrequin, Tory Burch, Burberry, Saks Fifth Avenue.
Other stores: Posman Books, Cos Bar, Davidoff Cigars and Babesta.
Also: Equinox Fitness Club, Institute of Culinary Education, Bright Horizons Early Education & Pre-School.