Standing in the middle of the Calatravasaurus hub last week felt like being in a mausoleum.
Just a handful of the thousands of tourists above had found their way through a labyrinth of desolate corridors into this solemn hall.
As Post colleague Steve Cuozzo noted in February, it is “a void in search of a purpose.”
With no colorful retail or carousel to provide life, it has more the feel of a Sept. 11 memorial than the grand hall eventually meant for shoppers and PATH commuters.
Indeed, most PATH commuters to New Jersey were using the “temporary” Vesey Street entrance by 7 World Trade Center, which in some misguided scheme is slated to be closed if a performing arts center is ever developed. Walking these long distances is simply exhausting.
You can go all around the above-ground $4 billion Calatravasaurus hump and its soaring prongs — poised as if to catch falling predators in an upcoming “Sharknado” flick — and never find your way into the bottom of the 160-foot-tall bowl.
Still suffering as always from an old broken ankle, I limped my way from elegant Brookfield Place and through the West Corridor, where a new “media wall” is being installed to liven up the polar wilderness.
From there, still-under-construction concrete tunnels run up to Vesey Street, where rather than paying the fee for the PATH, I took the long escalator and then walked outside and east on Vesey. A mid-block high-walled corridor now snakes visitors south into the 9/11 Memorial Museum and Memorial pools, but you end up far behind the hump.
You can get there, however, by walking all the way to the Burger King at Church and Liberty, and entering a barely marked door to the PATH at the base of 4 World Trade Center across the street.
Someday, retailers like Eataly will open here, but, for now, it is more nothingness down an escalator to where Tumi, Sephora, Victoria’s Secret and others are finally building out their storefronts.
Once into the fishbowl itself, you can see the top of One World Trade Center through its long and narrow Oculus window, or look the other way and imagine the sunshine pouring in on every Sept. 11 and hoping the tragic souls will finally get some peace.
Bally’s is strolling up Madison Avenue from the rear of the GM Building to a prime spot at 687 Madison right across from Hermès on East 62nd Street.
Bally’s, represented by Andrew Goldberg of CBRE, is taking the entire southeast corner of Madison and East 62nd — former home of Church’s and current location of the Georg Jensen spread. Goldberg also represents the Cumberland House co-op, which sits above the line of retailers where Brunello Cucinelli recently expanded southward.
Georg Jensen will then move diagonally across Madison to the former Kentshire space at 698 Madison, just north of Nello. Here it will have 900 square feet on the ground floor and 700 square feet of basement storage.
Robert L. Freedman, Jonathan S. Plotkin and Tim Pond of Colliers International represented Georg Jensen in the move.
Greg Tannor and Stephen Ruiz of Cushman & Wakefield represented the master lessee of the property at 698-700 Madison. The two also now have the adjacent Leviev diamond dealer space available for sublease, sources said.
Rents, on average, on Madison Avenue range from $1,500 to $1,700 per square foot — but there is also product that runs into the $2,000s per square foot.
“Hermès is the anchor tenant, and to be in that catchment area creates a great deal of value for the adjoining tenants,” said Freedman. But he declined to discuss specific asking rents or the other retailers. “You have to ascribe a premium to that location.”
The other brokers could not be reached or declined to comment through spokespersons.