South Street Seaport seeks grocery store

The Howard Hughes Corporation is targeting a food market to occupy a nearly 40,000-square-foot space at their South Street Seaport redevelopment project.

The developer is in talks with celebrity chefs to curate the offerings, which will focus on specialty foods, in the vein of Mario Batali’s Italian marketplace Eataly, in the Flatiron District. Residents have slammed the Seaport plans to replace the abandoned Fulton Fish Market warehouses with a 50-story condo-hotel tower, arguing it will not fit in with the area’s traditionally low-rise buildings. The city has yet to approve the hotel, which is slated to hold 130,000 square feet of retail.

Midtown-based commercial brokerage RKF is serving as the exclusive leasing agent for the project, according to a report from the New York Post. [NYP] — Mark Maurer