After $250 Million in Costs, and $100,000 Per Day in Operating Losses, Jean-Georges’ Seaport Food Hall Goes Under
When it opened in 2022, the Tin Building by Jean-Georges, a seafood-centric dining destination in a landmarked structure on the East River that was once part of the historic Fulton Fish Market, seemed to have everything going for it. As New York emerged from the Covid pandemic, consumers were both weary of social distancing and ready to splurge on good times. Helmed by celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who branded the enterprise with his own name, the venture was also poised to ride a wave of food hall dining in a rapidly gentrifying Lower Manhattan neighborhood, offering under one roof half a dozen full-service restaurants, the same number of take-out counters, plus a quartet of saloons and a high-end grocery, spread across 54,000 square feet on two levels.
The euphoria didn’t last long. Customers who visited soon after the Tin Building’s debut were uniformly impressed by the quality of food, but just as often put off by lofty prices (such as $7 for a croissant), the sensory overload of the meticulously curated, stage-set atmosphere (made possible by a $194 million restoration of the building), and a bewildering array of options.
Not to be deterred, the Howard Hughes Corporation (at the time, the developer of the South Street Seaport and thus Mr. Vongerichten’s landlord) followed its nine-figure investment in the building by paying $45 million to become a 25-percent partner in the operation, plus another $10 million for the right to acquire more shares in the future.
As inflation spiked in the two years months after the Tin Building’s opening, enthusiasm among even among well-heeled customers for $25 cocktails began to wane. In spite of gross revenues of $32.4 million in 2023 (according to regulatory filings by Seaport Entertainment Group, which took over from Howard Hughes when the latter company spun off its Lower Manhattan investments), the Tin Building never came close to breaking even.
By the end of 2024, a large part of the staff had been laid off and several of the stalls in the Tin Building were vacant, while many of those that remained open began to take on new names, styles, and menus. In early 2025, further regulatory disclosures from Seaport Entertainment Group (filed with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, and first reported by Gothamist) acknowledged that the Tin Building was losing money at the rate of $100,000 per day.
An indication that Seaport Entertainment Group was focused on cutting its losses surfaced earlier this month, when the company parted with another property it had inherited from Howard Hughes, the nearby development site at 250 Water Street. After provisionally agreeing to sell the parcel to a builder for $150 million (a 20 percent discount from the $180 million that Howard Hughes had paid for the parcel in 2018), they slashed the price by another $7 million before closing the deal.
On Monday, February 23, it all came to an end at the Tin Building. The staff were sent home and the doors were padlocked. A representative for Mr. Vongerichten did not reply to a request for comment.
Later that afternoon, Seaport Entertainment Group announced that they had signed a lease for Pier 17 with the Balloon Museum, an immersive, experiential art show that fuses inflatable sculptures with special effects to create interactive environments. The company said that some of the restaurants operated by Mr. Vongerichten at the Tin Building would be relocated to other Seaport Entertainment properties, and that Balloon Museum would open by summer.