To Adam R. Rose’s dream of turning 1932-vintage Art Deco skyscraper 70 Pine St. into downtown’s most expensive luxury rental apartments, add a possibly more daunting challenge: to bring the Wall Street district its first great place to eat.
“We feel very strongly that downtown is ready for a real restaurant,” said the Rose Associates co-president, who runs the development/management giant with cousin Amy Rose.
“Nothing to take away from eight steakhouses,” he said, “But we need a family-friendly, tablecloth restaurant — basically an American brasserie.”
Up to 15,500 square feet of the 66-story landmark tower’s 35,000 square feet of retail space will be available for the nobly proportioned, high-ceilinged restaurant space with tall windows, once longtime tenant Captain’s Ketch moves out next year.
Rose “has no idea” yet what the rent will be, but said his company would make a significant buildout contribution. “It’s not about the dollar, but the quality of the operator,” he said.
The campaign to lure a star-quality eatery might seem a footnote to the city’s largest offices-to-apartment project ever. But Rose views it as central to his vision to make the tower’s ground floor public-friendly as it has not been for 50 years.
Although 70 Pine, originally home to the City Services energy company, once was full of lobby uses open to everyone, it effectively barred outsiders after AIG bought it in the 1970s.
But soon, the long-forbidden lobby will be open to all through entrances on Pine, Cedar and Pearl streets, and also likely include a patisserie, a “grab-and-go” snack spot and possibly a clothing store.
Barely slowed by Superstorm Sandy, the top-to-bottom transformation is barreling along. Rose landed a $300 million construction loan last winter for the $550 million project. It’s putting in nearly $30 million of its own, and the rest is by financial partner Eastbridge Group.
The tower will have 644 rental units, more than 100 of them with terraces, plus 132 more on floors 3-6 to be used for extended stay and likely to be managed by Furnished Quarters.
The apartment rental office is to open next summer, with move-ins by October 2014. Rose expects 40 percent of his tenants will work in finance. The rest, “not foreigners but New Yorkers,” he predicted, will represent creative, media and high-tech industries.
Encouraged by a swelling, high-earning population nearing 60,000 below Chambers Street, Rose aims to top downtown’s previous record holder for high rents, the Frank Gehry-designed 8 Spruce Street. He calls the Forest City Ratner project’s $66 square-foot net rents “our starting point.”
Miller Samuel residential market guru Jonathan Miller, noting the neighborhood “remains primarily rental,” diplomatically said 70 Pine’s “central location and amenities could enable them to achieve at or near-record pricing for the neighborhood as evidenced by the success of 8 Spruce St.”
Why is Rose so sure? “We’re right on the grid where you can walk to everything,” he said, unlike 8 Spruce’s location in “no man’s land.” For good measure he jibed that most of his competition’s apartments are “based on curvy Gehry facades, and unfurnishable.”
He also touts 70 Pine’s amenities. Ultra high-end fitness/spa/“wellness” club La Palestra has a deal to operate a two-level facility on the lower lobby and basement levels.
Rose is also in talks with prominent club and lounge operators he won’t identify to run the Panorama Club — a members-only retreat on floors 63-66, just below the tower’s spire. They include the octagonal observatory once used by AIG execs for private entertaining. Restaurant-world moles say reps for STK, Landmarc chef Marc Murphy and Gerber Bars, which runs Time Warner Center’s Stone Rose, have taken a look.
But the restaurant is key. FiDi remains culinarily shortchanged. There’s little to choose from beyond Cipriani Wall St. and steakhouses such as Delmonico’s and Capital Grill.
Rose said, “It’s a crime that thousands of high-earning men and women who work in the immediate neighborhood have to export their dining business to Tribeca or the Village.”
What about Battery Park City’s better places like Danny Meyer’s North End Grill? “I might as well get everyone to hate me simultaneously,” Rose joked. “Battery Park City is a lovely place to live, but it is not part of the historic urban grid.
“West Street seems to provide a psychological barrier for downtown residents, and they are hesitant to cross it.”
Rose Associates, which boasts a 27,000 apartment portfolio, took over 70 Pine St. two years ago after the former AIG headquarters had bounced from one owner to another. The vacant monolith made for a brooding black hole between Wall and Pine streets.
Rejecting earlier schemes to use the tower for offices and a hotel, Rose secured Landmarks Preservation Commission approval for minor lobby and facade alterations including a few new storefront entrances.
The plan promises to make 70 Pine St. as inviting at ground level as it is inspiring on the skyline.
All it needs is a visionary restaurateur to break the ice.