Projects would redefine retail scene

Real Estate Weekly, March 12, 1997 by Lois Weiss

Young people will be encouraged to perform at events and at concerts and the special activities at Atlantis will encourage learning, say the Atlantians.

To make life easier for both shoppers and area residents, a day care facility is planned that will stimulate and challenge the minds of its adolescent charges.

And of course, the young and old alike can have a turn at virtual reality through the latest in arcade hand, eye and stomach coordinating amusements.

Atlantis President Henry J. Eng was the originator of the city's World Yachts, and after selling out a few years ago to Circle Line, is now eager to get back into action with even better boats and cuisine and the creation of an internationally flavored South Street Seaport-type project a cannonball's shot from the tourist targeted Intrepid Air & Space Museum.

The Atlantis project is expected to cost upwards of $400 million, create 1,500 construction jobs and 4,000 new permanent jobs, bring in $59 million a year in sales taxes along with $700,000 plus in rent per year and $3 million in payments in lieu of real estate taxes.

The developers will encapsulate the pier pilings to protect them from damage, remove asbestos, and run 16 shuttle buses to major cross streets and hotels.

Besides, there is parking for 900 autos that will generate another $3 million in taxes and enable the developers to entice suburban and urban auto owners to dine and shop with parking vouchers, something the downstream Chelsea Piers operators should learn.

Eng, Friedman, Minskoff and Atlantis Senior Executive Vice President Kin Ming Lam, however, are disappointed. After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on FRCH architects, commissioning planning and economic feasibility studies to meet or exceed all community and RFP requests, particularly by creating a setting that would become a magnet for community and tourist involvement, a strategic meeting with a high level city official - whom Eng declined to identify - was cancelled and he and his partners never got their "oral exam."

With financiers lining up to provide this primarily minority-owned company with over $400 million, Eng is worried the six-month wait for the Riverview studio's conditional designation to lapse will end up burying his project as well.

"The other plan is industrially-oriented with virtually no public access," he noted, encouraged by support for Atlantis from community activists who usually are foes of developers. "The people have a right to choose, and you are talking about a project that will affect the people of this city for next 100 years."

Discovery Circle

The most important decision the people and politicians of the MTA, state and city are facing, however, is the choice for the Coliseum site.

Over the last three years, Discovery Circle's creators have fine-tuned their program for the inside of the Coliseum's base to concentrate on education through entertainment. Driving creative force David Plattner has dubbed this concept "edu-tainment".

His inspired vision for the Coliseum's podium has converted retailing king, Melvin Simon, and meticulous developer, Gerald Hines, to his corner, while a half dozen major cities are either working with or courting Plattner to bring new economic life to their towns with similar concepts.