Jon Pepper wrote to say that abcV, the vegan restaurant at the Tin Building (it was originally called Seeds & Weeds, which wasn’t the best name) had closed permanently. Sure enough, it’s listed as closed on Google and is no longer on the Tin Building website. (Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who created the Tin Building and all the restaurants in it, has the original abcV on East 19th Street, an offshoot of ABC Kitchen.)

Then there was the story from Gothamist on Friday saying that 100 workers at the two-story food hall, which opened to fanfare in 2022 were fired after the company did a “surprise check” of identity and employment authorization just before the new year. (It happens that I have a pal working there — and he confirmed that yes, every employee had to come in with their ID.) Gothamist said they confirmed with six employees that there were massive job cuts at the end of December.

But what was more discouraging (and not at all shocking, if you have ever tried to shop over there, since the prices are outrageous) was the overall losses: “The Tin Building by Jean-Georges… is losing its parent company more than $100,000 a day on average, or $83 million in total, according to publicly available financial records. The building’s losses are staggering, according to two investment analysts who research similar properties, including Chelsea Market and Eataly.”

When the building was first opened, it was billed as a joint project between the Howard Hughes Corporation, which controls a lot of the Seaport, including the massive development that is 250 Water. But this past summer, HHC spun off Seaport Entertainment Group, which is now a publicly traded company. Seaport Entertainment Group owns a 25 percent stake in Jean-Georges Restaurants and 65 percent of the Tin Building, according to the Gothamist story.

These sort of corporate machinations are well above my paygrade, and while I really hope I am wrong, this is troubling. Even for January, when everything slows down, it’s just too quiet over there…