New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority will issue requests by the end of the month for two new spaces in its landmark Grand Central Terminal, targeting both for sit-down restaurants.
One space, of up to 12,300 square feet, includes the west side of Vanderbilt Hall — the former main waiting room — on 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan. The other, totaling about 4,700 square feet, is an undeveloped area above the Grand Central market with a balcony overlooking the market’s eastern end.
“We expect a lot of interest,” the authority’s real estate director, Jeffrey Rosen, said at the MTA board’s finance committee meeting on Monday.
The authority wants the restaurants to open in 2013, the terminal’s centennial year.
Over the past five years, according to MTA officials, 45 retail leases in Grand Central have expired, with new leases replacing them. “Even in these lean economic times, every time we’ve had a lease expire, the bids have been above what the previous tenant was paying,” said Nancy Marshall, the MTA’s director of Grand Central Terminal Development.
The MTA has been looking to generate real estate revenue and reduce rent exposure to offset the costs of such major projects as the East Side Access, the Second Avenue Subways and the Fulton Center. It plans to sell or lease its headquarters on 347 Madison Ave. in Midtown Manhattan, and move more employees to 2 Broadway, in the city’s financial district.
“Our office rightsizing will take some while,” Rosen admitted.
In 1994, according to the MTA, it earned $7 million in rent for retail space at Grand Central. That figure rose to $15 million in 2002 and $27 million in 2011, the authority said.
