Square Feet: Pier’s Developer Looks for a Creative Tenant Mix

The plans are part of a larger effort to redesign Pier 57, a long-abandoned former shipping and passenger terminal that spans about a half-million square feet at 15th Street in the meatpacking district.

The $200 million project, set to break ground in October and to be completed in 2015, will also include a food bazaar akin to a Southeast Asian night market, with noodle pullers and sushi bars. There will also be 400 shipping containers housing some 200 stores and start-up companies. The developer, Youngwoo & Associates, is designing an approximately two-acre public green space for the roof.

“It is all about start-ups, pop-ups, showcasing new talent,” said Young S. Woo, founder and a principal of Youngwoo. “In the 1950s, the American shopping mall came to small-town U.S.A. and it killed Main Street and local creativeness — now that cycle is reversing itself.”

To that end, the developer has spent the last several years, since winning approval to develop the site in 2009, working to find the right tenant mix. It has sent teams to tour Brixton Market in London, Granville Island Public Market in Vancouver, Canada, and the Rise commercial building in Hong Kong. It has been to Istanbul, France and countless markets in Latin America, where Mr. Yoo was raised.

“We have had four years to perfect the model, to see what has been successful,” said Zachary Beloff, the firm’s marketing director.

For companies that offer an original concept or use of space, but cannot afford the market rent, Youngwoo will offer discounts. “We would make up for the lower rent because that store would presumably drive foot traffic to the pier and allow overall sales — and thus overall rents — to increase,” Mr. Beloff said.

The 560,000-square-foot Pier 57 has been vacant since New York City Transit abandoned it in 2003, except when it briefly housed protesters detained during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Youngwoo has a 49-year lease with the Hudson River Park Trust for the pier, and will spearhead and pay for redevelopment and leasing. Its scheduled 2015 opening date is roughly the same time that the Whitney Museum will open its doors four blocks to the south on Gansevoort Street.

Youngwoo has rebranded Pier 57 the SuperPier, a term used in a 1952 article in Popular Mechanics magazine that detailed its construction. After the original Pier 57 was destroyed by a fire in 1947, it was rebuilt as a shipping and passenger terminal for the Grace Line. The builders eschewed the wooden piles that supported most piers, and instead used three caissons, enormous concrete boxes. The hollow boxes were poured in a diked basin upstate, then towed, floating, down the Hudson River to the pier site.

The boxes now form the pier’s basement, which Youngwoo has leased to the company Brooklyn Boulders for a climbing gym.

“The space down there is really cool — it is cold year round and you can feel that you are underwater,” said Lance Pinn, a co-founder of Brooklyn Boulders.

The company is also in talks to build an ice-climbing wall outside. “So not only will we be the only underwater climbing gym in the world and the only fully dedicated climbing gym in Manhattan, but we could have the only ice-climbing wall in a major American city,” Mr. Pinn said.

Another early tenant was the clothing company Opening Ceremony, which will open a store on the mezzanine level, at the 15th Street entrance. “We haven’t decided how much space to take yet,” said Carol Lim, a co-founder of Opening Ceremony. “Our plans are still under development, but we are always looking to the environment to take our cue, and because it is on the West Side, near a lot of outdoor walking and bicycling, we may focus on that.”

Opening Ceremony discovered the Pier 57 project because it was looking for a site to hold its first show for New York Fashion Week. Beginning Thursday, the company will have a weeklong marketplace at the pier that will also function as a preview of what is to come. The event, called BTW, for By the Water, will include pop-up stores like The Newsstand by the creative firm Alldayeveryday, and food vendors including Asiadog.

When the project is completed, most long-term anchor tenants will be in conventional storefronts that will range from 3,000 to 20,000 square feet and cost $100 to $150 a square foot. Opening Ceremony’s permanent store, on the other hand, will be made from shipping containers, called Incuboxes.

Youngwoo will also offer the Incuboxes, which will come at a flat rate that includes taxes, electricity and other fees, to start-up companies. “It is almost like turnkey spaces,” Mr. Beloff said. “We want to make it easy for them, as painless as possible.” The spaces will range from 80 to 160 square feet at a cost of $600 to $5,000 a month. Thirty percent of them will be leased for less than one year, while the remainder will have two- to 10-year leases.