••• “South Street Seaport’s Pier 17 retail mall, which has been commercially adrift for years, has a shipshape, glass-wrapped future in store. Owner Howard Hughes Corp. plans to replace the boxy, near-windowless three-level shopping complex with a shimmering, transparent one topped by a rooftop park and designed by architectural firm SHoP. The proposal was unveiled last night at a Community Board 1 meeting. […] ‘Pier 17 has been a dud almost since it opened, and […] Hughes is serious about making it attractive to New Yorkers, not just tourists,’ a source said. […] Asking rents are expected to rival prime space in neighborhoods like Soh0—from $300 a square foot and up.” One word: Eataly. —New York Post

••• “Roughly two months after a board was named to create a performing-arts center at the World Trade Center, the institution has passed two important milestones: It has been granted nonprofit status and hired its first staffer to help bring the institution into being. The new hire is Maggie Boepple, a former president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and government affairs consultant for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and other agencies.” —Wall Street Journal