Square Feet: Pier 17 Mall Has Upgrades Planned After Hurricane Sandy

But the storm surge largely spared Pier 17, the seaport’s long-maligned shopping mall to the east. The operators of the mall, the Howard Hughes Corporation of Dallas, say it escaped damage because it is three feet above the pier, which in turn sits well above the water. And so, the company, which holds the ground lease to the city-owned pier, is moving forward with its plans to transform its dated festival marketplace into an open and airy three-story retail and entertainment center.

The local community board voted last month to support the proposal, despite reservations about the signage and some other design features. Though the plan is still working its way through the city’s land use process, the developer’s agreement with the city Economic Development Corporation requires that construction begin on July 1. David R. Weinreb, the chief executive of Howard Hughes, said in a telephone interview that the company would meet that deadline.

After being blocked off by metal gates and closed until this month because of concerns about the stability of the pier, the mall is now open, though some stores are still closed. Inspectors from Halcrow, an international engineering company hired by Howard Hughes, recently determined that the structure was sound. The pier is south of the Brooklyn Bridge, just beyond Fulton Street.

“The pier got a solid rating,” Christopher J. Curry, a senior executive vice president at Howard Hughes, said in a recent interview at the company’s offices on Fulton Street. City officials confirmed that no problems were found at the pier.

In addition to Pier 17, the company controls 170,000 square feet of space farther inland at the seaport, including stores like Brookstone, Ann Taylor and Coach, which suffered extensive storm damage.

“We’re working diligently to remediate the shops,” Mr. Weinreb said. Asked whether the closed stores would remain at the seaport, he said, “We’re in discussions with our tenants about what is in their best interests. Many of those tenants enjoy very good sales and fully expect and want to be back open.”

From the mid-1980s to the early ’90s, the seaport was a big draw, especially for young people, who crowded its bars and restaurants. But then it fell out of favor with New Yorkers, though it has remained a must-see for visitors taking in other downtown sites, retail specialists said.

The operators of the mall at Pier 17 have long wanted to give it more cachet with city residents. Shortly before the economic crisis, a previous owner, General Growth Properties, a mall developer, introduced a much more ambitious plan for the seaport, including a 42-story tower, which was unpopular with residents.

The Howard Hughes Corporation, which is primarily known for its vast master-planned communities like Summerlin, near Las Vegas, acquired the shopping center in 2010, when it was spun off from General Growth as the mall company was emerging from bankruptcy.

Completed in 1985, the Pier 17 shopping center was developed by the Rouse Company, the creator of marketplaces in Boston and Baltimore. (General Growth bought Rouse in 2004.)

But by the time the mall opened, the marketplace concept may already have been outmoded. The existing mall “has basically been a disappointment to everyone over its life,” Hardy Adasko, a senior vice president for planning at the city Economic Development Corporation, testified last week at a City Planning Commission hearing. His agency sees the redevelopment of the pier as a way of advancing its long-term investment in the waterfront, he said.

In contrast to the marketplace design, which was intended to shield visitors from the grittiness of the port, the new structure will capitalize on its waterfront location, offering abundant views of the bridge. Outdoor space on either side of the pier also will be enhanced.

Delays in Network Upgrades Take Toll on Ericsson Profit

The company, based in Stockholm, said net profit in the three months through September fell to 2.2 billion Swedish kronor, or $328 million, from 3.8 billion kronor a year earlier, as sales fell 2 percent to 54.6 billion kronor.

“We see a continued macroeconomic slowdown and political unrest in parts of the world, which has led to more cautious operator spending,” Hans Vestberg, the Ericsson chief executive, said.

Martin Nilsson, an analyst at Handelsbanken in Stockholm, said Ericsson’s ongoing struggles were also the result of an industrywide oversupply of high-speed network equipment on the global market. In the nine months through September, sales at Ericsson have fallen by 1.5 percent from a year earlier.

Mr. Nilsson said Ericsson and its rivals, Huawei of China, Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent, had continued to develop new, faster networks whose ability to handle data far outstripped current demand.

As a result, wireless operators are managing phone grids with a lot of unused capacity and have no pressing need to buy and build newer networks, Mr. Nilsson said.

“Ericsson is in a market that has been structurally flat and slightly declining for a decade,” he said. “Since the year 2000, the level of data traffic on wireless networks has increased about 200 times. But total industry sales are still 5 to 10 percent lower.”

Ericsson’s earnings were also weighed down by continued losses at ST-Ericsson, its chip and handset components venture with the Swiss company STMicroelectronics. Ericsson booked a loss of 600 million kronor at that venture, based in Geneva, after losing 700 million kronor a year earlier.

In a conference call with analysts, Mr. Vestberg said that modest levels of global demand for networking gear had changed little over the past year, as many operators chose to upgrade existing networks rather than build new ones, which weighs on Ericsson’s profit.

The company, as is its practice, gave no forecast for future sales or profitability. Over the long term, Mr. Vestberg said the market for wireless gear remained strong, as rising sales of smartphones encouraged operators to invest in new networks. The number of global smartphone users, which topped one billion in the third quarter, is expected to triple to three billion by 2017, he said.

“The introduction of new devices and applications put higher consumer demands on network performance and quality,” Mr. Vestberg said. “This drives demand for our technology, software and services capabilities.”

Sales in Ericsson’s networks division, which made up 49 percent of sales, fell 17 percent in the third quarter to 26.9 billion kronor from 32.5 billion kronor. Sales of Ericsson’s services business, which made up 45 percent of sales, rose 19 percent to 24.3 billion kronor.

In an interview, Mr. Vestberg said it was possible that Ericsson could soon generate more sales on a quarterly basis from its growing business of servicing networks, which includes installing new equipment to managing networks for operators on an outsourcing basis, than from actually selling network gear, its traditional core activity.

“It is nothing that we target, but of course it could happen,” Mr. Vestberg said. “We had extremely strong equipment sales earlier this year and now we are installing all of that.”

“The market for services is far greater and much less penetrated than the network equipment market,” he added.

In China, Japan and South Korea, Ericsson’s second-largest regional market after North America, sales fell 13 percent to 8.4 billion kronor. Mr. Vestberg said Chinese operators were testing new, networks based on Long Term Evolution, or LTE, technology, but did not buy the gear because the Chinese government had yet to auction the necessary licenses and broadcast spectrum.

Sales also fell 10 percent in Latin America, to 5.4 billion kronor, and sales fell by more than 20 percent in Scandinavia, Russia and the rest of Europe.

In North America, Ericsson’s largest geographic market with 26 percent of global sales, revenue rose 16 percent, to 14 billion kronor. Purchases of LTE equipment by U.S. and Canadian operators offset a 50 percent decline in sales of gear that runs on an older standard, Code Division Multiple Access, or CDMA, technology, Mr. Vestberg said.

Shares of Ericsson fell 4.6 percent in Stockholm trading to 56.5 kronor.