Here’s part 2 of the investigation I’ve been working on w/@ABC7NY‘s @KristinThorne since September. In this installment, a ‘megalithic’ collection of eateries goes under, leaving the future of a #NYC historic landmark in question.
Since the early to mid-2000s, restaurant developer Peter Poulakakos has steadily built a portfolio of fashionable eateries across Lower Manhattan. The collapse of one of his more recent projects — Pier A Harbor House at the southern tip of Manhattan — leaves the future of a New York City historic landmark in question.
By Scott Brinton
Part two of two. For the first installment of this story, click here.
Pier A Harbor House, a three-story, 28,000-square-foot collection of high- and medium-end dining venues overlooking New York Harbor, lies vacant these days, its many stools resting upside down atop bars and tables, its wine glasses collecting dust and its stainless-steel beer kegs stacked on shelves.
A handful of notes taped to the inside of its glass doors read, “Pier A will be closed until further notice. We apologize for the inconvenience. Be safe.”
Pier A, a national historic landmark that was built in 1886 as the headquarters of the New York Docks Department and is owned by New York City, has remained unoccupied since the Harbor House shuttered in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Restaurant developer Peter Poulakakos, whose portfolio of roughly 20 Manhattan eateries has been described as an “empire,” was the force behind Harbor House, along with his father, Harry, who founded the iconic Harry’s at Hanover Square, only blocks from Wall Street, in 1972.
In 2011, the Poulakakoses joined with the Dermot Company and others to develop the Harbor House. That March, Pier A Battery Park Associates LLC, of which the Poulakakoses are listed as owners in court documents, signed a 25-year lease to Pier A with the Battery Park City Authority, a New York State public benefit corporation. The BPCA is responsible for the site and is charged with management of several other venues within the 92-acre Battery Park City neighborhood on Manhattan’s southwest side.
The lease was worth $39.1 million in rent over its life, in addition to a percentage of annual gross sales above $18 million. Though New York City owns the pier, the BPCA acts as the landlord, as it leases the site from the city, so the agreement that it signed with Pier A Battery Park Associates was a sublease.
Now, it is unclear how the BPCA will recoup the millions of dollars in lost rent that it was to receive from Pier A Harbor House.
The BPCA referred The Advocate to a public affairs consultancy firm, Risa Heller Communications of Manhattan, which had no comment.
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