No corner of the city, it seems, is immune to the food hall trend. The creative team behind Gansevoort Market, which opened in 2014 in the Meatpacking District, are bringing an upscale food court to Staten Island as part of the forthcoming Empire Outlets megaproject. It’ll be called the Marketplace at Empire Outlets, or MRKTPL (yes, really).
Fancy food courts are all the rage these days, and many of them—including the forthcoming ones at Pier 57 and Hudson Yards—are helmed by big-name chefs (in those cases, Anthony Bourdain and Danny Meyer, respectively). While the team behind Gansevoort doesn’t have quite that level of star power, they do have the experience of running that MePa market, which features vendors like Tacombi, Ed’s Lobster Bar, and Champion Coffee. While vendors for MRKTPL haven’t been announced yet, a press release released by BFC (the developer behind Empire Outlets) claims that the idea is to give “out-of-towners an authentic New York feel.” (How that will manifest itself is anyone’s guess.)
The press release also says that the 12,000-square-foot food court will “tie together the history of the New York Harbor with modern communal spaces to eat and gather.” Renderings released by BFC show what that might look like, with an industrial-style look and plenty of open seating (and more than 3,000 square feet of outdoor space), which you can see below.
The project is slated for completion in 2017, along with the rest of the SHoP-designed Empire Outlets, which will include a hotel, restaurants, and a ridiculous amount of retail space. It’ll sit near the New York Wheel, which is currently under construction.
statenislandfyi 