Food market, Howard Hughes battle over use of Fulton Fish Market buildings

Lower Manhattan’s popular New Amsterdam Market wants to make a permanent home of the abandoned Fulton Fish Market warehouses, but it’s facing opposition from Howard Hughes Corporation, DNAinfo reported. The South Street Seaport developer has first rights to the city-owned properties that the market covets around the seaport.

The buildings that the market’s founder, Robert LaValva, hopes to occupy are the Tin Building and the New Market Building, located near the base of Pier 17. Though Howard Hughes plans an overhaul of the Pier 17 mall, the work does not include the two warehouses, which company officials say need work and for now, are better left untouched. Howard Hughes declined to comment on specific plans for the buildings.

Howard Hughes officials have reached out to LaValva with an olive branch, telling him that he can move his operation into the Pizzeria Uno building on Pier 17, but he rejected the offer.

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“The Fulton Fish Market space is so vital and iconic and important,” LaValva said.

John Fratta, the chairman of the Seaport/Civic Center Committee of Community Board 1, said he would try to schedule a meeting between both sides to reach an agreement. [DNAinfo]