Store rents in the Port Authority’s underground World Trade Center Transportation Hub will run as high as $550 a square foot, the city’s leading retail brokers say — as pricey as nearly anywhere in Midtown except for a few rarefied stretches of Fifth and Madison avenues.
So no wonder global mall giant Westfield Group wants to let tenants in the hub’s Oculus use its vast public floor for private events and promotional activities, as The Post’s Lois Weiss first reported last week.
Westfield is managing and leasing the WTC’s retail space. The Oculus is the main concourse of the Santiago Calatrava-designed rail station beneath the famous “wings” that have begun to poke above ground.
The concourse is vast enough to swallow most of Grand Central Terminal. Its floor, two levels below street level, is 350 feet long and 145 feet wide under a 160-foot-high ceiling — big enough to accommodate Fashion Week and a parade of elephants at the same time.
No one mentioned until now that it might be rented out like the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur. The PA has always promoted the Oculus as an architecturally stupendous, public portal for PATH and subway riders and as a symbol of post-9/11 resiliency.
But last week, my colleague Weiss exclusively bared a never-before-announced plan to rent out the Oculus for private events such as fashion shows, and possibly for weddings.
Westfield clearly had wanted to divulge the strategy on its own terms, and declined to comment when we called about it.
A PA spokesman at first tried to suggest the catering-hall concept was all a notion of Tara Stacom, the Cushman & Wakefield superbroker quoted by Weiss who represents 1 World Trade Center but is not directly involved at the hub.
Later in the day, however, a PA rep said the agency “fully supports hosting events in public areas of the WTC Hub in an appropriate way so as to not impact commuters.” He wouldn’t elaborate. However, a different PA source said the agency would “absolutely set requirements and parameters for how the Oculus is used.”
Robert K. Futterman, CEO of retail leasing giant RKF, told us, “The best retail in Westfield’s WTC project is the Oculus. It’s their center court where they’re shooting for the most high-profile retailers. They’re talking to all the big guys like Gucci and Prada.”
Futterman said asking rents range from $450 to $500 a square foot in general and “as high as $550 a foot” at specific locations.
He endorsed Westfield’s plan for the Oculus floor, saying, “Events, concerts and corporate events” would be good for stores as well as a potential community amenity.
Westfield is paying the PA $612.5 million for a joint-venture partnership to operate an eventual 460,000 square feet of retail at the WTC, including in the lobbies of three office towers and in underground corridors.
No one questions Westfield’s leasing prowess. The Sydney, Australia-based company’s $64.1 billion portfolio boasts some 100 high-end shopping malls worldwide, including 47 in the US. The WTC shopping scene will see an influx of thousands of employees of Condé Nast, which is moving to 1 WTC in early 2015.
Even so, luring stores to the site could be a challenge.
Despite brokers’ oft-stated confidence in a retail “boom” in New York, vacancies are visible in much of Manhattan, especially the Wall Street/WTC area. And newly minted store space to compete with the WTC is also coming on line nearby at Brookfield Center (the former World Financial Center) and the MTA’s Fulton Center.
The hub has long been a combustible argument-starter for its immense size relative to the number of people who will use it — estimated by the PA at 200,000 a day, but by critics as 50,000 — and its cost, which mushroomed from $2.2 billion in 2004 to $3.75 billion. If it’s completed in mid-2015 as now projected, it will be seven years behind schedule.
Critics say the mammoth main concourse could be lonely, and questioned whether stores aligned along its edges will see much traffic — issues that could both be addressed by using the floor for private activities.
But it raises the question of whether it’s appropriate to close off sections for commercial use the way the Times Square plazas sometimes are. Most public officials winding down for the holiday weekend said they hadn’t studied the issue.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who represents the district, said through a rep, “This is the first we are learning of it, but if it’s a resource to the community and open to local organizations and non-profits we would certainly take a look at it.”
A rep for Community Board 1 said, “We will raise this at the next opportunity when the Port Authority appears at one of our committees.”
One real estate heavy hitter not involved with the project said the idea to use it for private events was “a major acknowledgment it’s a boondoggle.”