Tavros Capital is making progress on changes to the beleaguered development site at 250 Water Street.
Chelsea Piers Fitness signed a lease for a five-story, 76,000-square-foot health and wellness facility in the Seaport District, the New York Post reported. Financial details of the lease were not disclosed.
Chelsea Piers chief executive officer David Tewksbury said the facility would include both indoor and outdoor spaces. Tavros partner Colin Rankowitz, meanwhile, said the tenant would feed into the company’s “vision to deliver a complete neighborhood asset.”
The lease is one of the first outward signs of progress at the site since Tavros’ acquisition last year. The development is expected to break ground over the winter and include 600 apartments — 25 percent of those affordable — commercial and outdoor space; Atlantic Retail is marketing 35,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor.
Tavros and Atlas Capital purchased the site last year from Seaport Entertainment Group for $150 million. The move was a reversal for the seller, which the previous year spun off from Howard Hughes Holding in a deal backed by billionaire Bill Ackman after it sunk $220 million into the purchase and air rights and spent years tied up in legal wrangling over the site.
Howard Hughes bought the site for $180 million in 2018 after the previous owner, the Milstein family, failed to secure building approval. Hughes pledged to pay $40 million for 235,000 square feet of air rights for the South Street Seaport Museum, and shortly afterwards received building approval.
But in 2022, the South Street Seaport Coalition, a community preservation group, filed a lawsuit challenging the Landmark Preservation Commission’s approval. A judge voided that approval in 2023, citing the air rights deal as “impermissible quid pro quo” between the developer and the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
But that decision was reversed about six months later, and the court declined to hear an appeal from the preservationist group, allowing the developer to finally proceed with construction.
Read more
Bill Ackman-backed group’s Seaport dev site sells at $30M loss
Deal in place to carry Howard Hughes’ Seaport tower to approval
Chelsea Piers signs lease at GFP’s 200 Varick Street
