Harlem is NYC’s Gateway to Big Box Retail

By Tom Nicholson

Finally taking shape after years of controversy and delay, Manhattan’s first “big box” retail center project is emerging on the East Harlem skyline at the site of a former wire factory.

The project is the East River Plaza, a four-story, 500,000-sq-ft retail complex and 1,250-space parking garage on six acres beside the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive between 116th and 119th streets.

Interior spaces in the steel and concrete structure will begin being turned over to tenants in February and work is on pace for the projected October 2009 opening, says David Blumenfeld, principal at Syosset, N.Y.-based Blumenfeld Development Group.

The company purchased the property 15 years ago, and has since partnered with New York-based Forest City Ratner as developer. Retail tenants that have signed leases to anchor the mall include Marshalls, Best Buy, Target and Home Depot, which, as of August, was “entertaining the idea of having Costco take over its space,” Blumenfeld says.

The site, skirting by the FDR and overlooking the East River, was formerly the location of the dilapidated Washburn Wire factory. Blumenfeld contracted New York-based Tishman Construction Co. as preconstruction manager for demolition of the factory and site remediation. Newark, N.J.-based R.C. Dolner has served as lead contractor since the construction work began. Both firms declined comment.

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The $500 million project reflects a trend among developers to squeeze typically suburban-type malls in dense urban settings. Ikea and Target were completed recently in Brooklyn and Bronx.

Blumenfeld hired Atlanta-based GreenbergFarrow, designer of nearly 2,000 Home Depot stores across the country, to solve the tricky design that required fitting into six acres a structure typically built on sites that are 40 or more acres.

GreenbergFarrow is familiar with such tight, urban retail jobs having designed, in addition to several completed New York City projects, the 600,000-sq-ft addition to Queens Center Mall in Rego Park and the 1 million-sq-ft Gateway Center at Bronx Terminal Market. Both projects are currently under construction.

At East River Plaza, pedestrian walkways and bridges are divided by an open-air gallery space, with the first three retail levels and a below-grade basement to house big-box retailers. Smaller retailers will occupy the upper two levels.

Spanning three city blocks, the design had to fit the entire program onto a small sliver of land, partly by thinking vertically where such projects typically sprawl horizontally, according to the project’s designers.

Blumenfeld tapped Pritzker Prize-winning architect Kevin Roche of Hamden, Conn.-based Roche and Dinkeloo Associates LLC to “add some flair” to the mall’s façade. Roche designed a steel mesh façade depicting the American flag, which will warp around the structure’s east-facing side.

Due to the high water table at the site and coupled with the underlying granite bedrock, “it was a difficult foundation job,” Blumenfeld said. The foundation work caused the developer to juggle foundation subcontractors when the first attempt at construction “did not succeed,” he adds.

The project, which has now swollen well beyond its original budget, has weathered its share of public controversy. Proposed in 1996 for $87 million, it stalled for lack of financing until Blumenfeld brought Forest City Ratner in as partner in 2004.