Fulton Mall is getting a Manhattan-esque food court.
The second phase of the massive retail and residential development City Point has topped out on the former site of Albee Square Mall and, a developer has revealed, it will include a “Chelsea-Market-style” bazaar and food court featuring 40 sellers and a bevy of Brooklyn restaurants.
“There’s great food in every neighborhood,” said Paul Travis, an executive with Washington Square Partners, one of the developers behind the project. “We see an opportunity to bring it all under one roof.”
Most, but not all of the vendors will be native to Kings County, and they will all bring something unique to the table, Travis said.
“Will have a full array of food, and each vendor will be very specialized,” Travis said.
City Point isn’t the only major development that is boasting plans of a food court inspired by the upscale gourmand complex across the East River. Raymond Chan, the developer behind the so-called “Eighth Avenue Center” in Sunset Park, said last month he is anchoring the four-tower project with a three-story “Chelsea-Market-style” retail space, as this paper exclusively reported.
City Point’s food court is just one planned component of the two-thirds-framed, block-long mega-project looming over Fulton and Willoughby streets. The complex is also set to include a mall and 700 apartments.
The developers expect to attract shoppers who already frequent the Fulton shopping strip, but hope to also draw customers from afar. City Point’s position along Flatbush Avenue Extension, the feeder road of which Travis called Brooklyn’s Main Street, should help, he said.
“Other places have highways, we have Flatbush Avenue,” he said.
Travis said he and his partners hope to cash in on their more immediate neighbors too, a population that will grow exponentially as 7,800 apartments planned in the area go on the market. But the group hardly considered the prospect of having so many customers so close to home when they first cooked up the City Point plan, he said.
“We didn’t think there’d be such a large residential market right here in Downtown,” he said.
A key piece of the project, Travis explained, is a pedestrian walkway called the Prince Street Passage that will connect Fulton Mall to Flatbush Avenue Extension. Travis said the two main drags used to be worlds apart, but that development is bringing them together.
“Foot-traffic on Fulton and Flatbush were like two ships passing in the night,” he said. “We’re going to link the two.”
The mall’s main anchor tenants will include locations of the discount-clothing store Century 21 and the upscale, food-and-beer-serving movie theater Alamo Draft House.
