Famed chef Andrew Carmellini drafted for Pier 17 restaurant

The Howard Hughes Corporation’s South Street Seaport has gobbled up another marquee-name restaurateur for the Seaport District’s crown-jewel Pier 17 — super chef Andrew Carmellini.

NoHo Hospitality Group, where Carmellini is partners with Josh Pickard and Luke Ostrom, just signed a lease for an 11,000-square-foot space to open next year.

Word of the deal first popped up in NYSE-traded HHC’s fourth-quarter earnings report, which was released after the market closed on Monday.

The still-unnamed restaurant will be part of a “pier village” on the pier’s first floor and mezzanine, which previously also signed up Jean-Georges Vongerichten and David Chang. The “village” is composed of six, two-story food-and-beverage “boxes” situated to provide view corridors for visitors to see the Brooklyn Bridge and the East River.

Carmellini’s popular eateries include The Dutch, Locanda Verde and Lafayette in Manhattan and Leuca and Westlight in Brooklyn.

Details were scarce on the Seaport restaurant. Pressed for more information, HHC’s New York tristate president, Saul Scherl, said only that it would be “in line with our vision of bringing unique offerings to the Seaport that can’t be found anywhere else in the city.”

Carmellini, through a rep, said, “Between the culinary talent and revitalization of local businesses, the Seaport District is the ideal spot for our new restaurant.”

The new Pier 17 is the centerpiece of HHC’s $731 million Seaport District waterfront redevelopment project that also includes a redesigned Fulton Market building and restored storefronts on Fulton and Front streets.

Among the project’s tenants is the iPic Theaters complex, which HHC said is the chain’s highest-grossing property.

Meanwhile, we’ve learned much more about the Seaport opening timeline than was previously known.

In April, ESPN will launch its new studio on Pier 17, a plan first reported in The Post last fall.

It will be followed quickly by the pier’s rooftop restaurant this summer, run by an operator yet to be named; Vongerichten’s 10,000- square-foot restaurant in the fall; and Chang’s new Momofuku later this year.

The Cipriani-run Mr. C Hotel will open this summer at the former Best Western site at 33 Peck Slip.

Meanwhile, upcoming retail and food openings at the Seaport include: DITA Eyewear this spring; vegan café Chloe this summer; Italian boutique 10 Corso Como in the Fulton Market building in September; and bookstore McNally Jackson by the end of 2018.

Vongerichten is also to open a 50,000-square-foot seafood market in the Tin Building, the vacant structure that stands between South Street and Pier 17. It’s to be dismantled and rebuilt about 33 feet east to create breathing room and public space between itself and the elevated FDR trestle.

Andrew Carmellini Getty Images

The new Seaport restaurants will bring culinary cred to Lower Manhattan’s East River — and satisfied stomachs to Water Street-corridor office workers and residents of nearby apartment towers.

Most of Downtown’s major new eateries so far have been closer to the Hudson River. They include the Beekman Hotel’s Augustine and Temple Court; Nobu at 195 Broadway; Beaubourg, Le District and Amada at Brookfield Place; North End Grill and El Vez elsewhere in Battery Park City; Wolfgang Puck’s Cut at the Four Seasons Hotel and Blue Ribbon Federal Grill.

Pier 17 also has about 130,000 square feet of office space available, which is being marketed by CBRE tristate CEO Mary Ann Tighe.

Source: New York Post