Seen & Heard: Did Disney Bail on the World Trade Center Mall?

••• When I ran into Harrison at Whole Foods the other day, I told him that I had put up his photo again, in the roundup of the most popular posts from 2016. (The photo ran with the home-page blurb.) He told me a bit about how far he had come, and I was even more impressed with him. Anyway, he went and posted a thank-you to everyone in a comment.

••• Speaking of Whole Foods, the produce section continues on its surrealistic bent. Thanks to @albertclee and @hjraasakk, respectively, for the photos of blueberries and blackberries.

••• David pointed out that there’s no longer any mention of a Disney store on the Westfield World Trade Center website, and asked whether anyone knows anything. The store was even in the press release that Westfield put out when the mall opened in August, but I didn’t find anything online about the plans for it being abandoned. I went to the Westfield site to make sure it’s not there (trust but verify!), and I did learn that there are going to be two Duane Reades—the one we knew about off the Vesey entrance, and another one on the upper level of the passageway to Brookfield Place, near the Condé Nast entrance. And a currency-exchange place, the Change Group, will be nearby it. And there are only two Starbucks now (both with signage up), instead of the three that had been planned. But back to Disney: I was at the mall with some friends and their kids the other day, and one of the kids asked if there was a toy store. You should’ve seen his face when I said that the only toy store was an educational one (Marbles). Which reminds me…. There had also been plans for a Lego store, but I guess those fell apart.

••• In other Westfield World Trade Center news, did we know that Leather Spa has a Fulton Center location, along with the one at 28 John?

••• And Yves restaurant put up a cute little corner sign.

••• Spotify made a good Tribeca joke! (Despite the internal capitalization.)

 

8 Comments

  1. Marbles is the only store that has always had a bunch of people in it from the start, sometimes playing games in the corridor. Don’t know if they’re buying! Until a few days before Christmas, the other stores throughout were still not very busy, even when the corridors were crowded. I thought I heard that Toys’R’Us was going to be in the space across from the PATH, and the Pressed Juicery is almost ready to open–it’s a kiosk in the passageway just as you get to the Fulton Center metrocard machines.

  2. Back in the day (1970’s), Tribeca was TriBeCa, to emphasize the origins of the neighborhood name – an acronym of Triangle Below Canal St. Soho was SoHo too, I believe.

  3. I really liked the toys and games, educational and otherwise at that marbles store. Best store in the entire mall!

  4. TriBeCa was & TriBeCa it will remain.

  5. Is it just me or is Westfield struggling to get its “committed” tenants to finally open up shop in this mall? It seems a good chunk of the space is either unaccounted for or has “coming soon” signs. Whta happened to “Marketplace NYC” or the Ford store or even Starbucks, Duane Reade, and Gateway Newsstand??? All have signs up but look nowhere close to being ready to open. In fact, it seems that the vast majority of stores that weren’t able to open in August are *still* not open. That smells like trouble to me – especially if even Duane Reade and Starbucks are not opening???? The irony is that Westfield delayed the opening of the mall because it wanted all the stores to open at once. It seems that even they finally threw in the towel when it became apparent that only 60% of their “committed” retailers were in any position to open in the near future and just decided to open half-empty in August. Don’t get me wrong, I think the mall is a great asset to Downtown Manhattan. However, Westfield has proven itself incompetent as the operator – first by constantly delaying the opening of the mall and now by being unable to get its tenants from actually opening.

  6. Ford is open, so there! Private party there tonight. They have a big screen with subway departure times in case you don’t want to buy a car. Also work is being done on at least one of the stores on the balcony of the west concourse, and on the upper level of south concourse–whatever the coffee place there is called.

    And the glass at the #1 train entrance is almost completely installed, so you will be able to stand on the floor of the oculus and see the train going by above you (if they ever finish it).

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