Pier A Harbor House Millions in Debt to City; Suggestions to Repurpose Pier for Ferries
The Waterfront Conservancy tried to recoup the $32 million it says it is owed in back rent via a lawsuit alleging fraud. An appeals court tossed the suit claiming the fraud charges were not substantiated. Meanwhile, the unpaid back rent began accumulating several years before the COVID period starting in 2018.
| 02 Mar 2023 | 06:21
Pier A as seen from the harbor. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
The owners of a restaurant at 22 Battery Place owe the city $32 million in rent payments after the city paid to renovate the pier where the now shuttered restaurant sits.
Pier A Harbor House, owned by father and son restaurateurs Harry and Peter Poulakakos, originally opened in 2014. The city spent $30 million to modernize and update the pier in anticipation of the restaurant’s opening. The Poulakakos team signed a lease promising the city $39.1 million in rent over the course of the next 25 years in return for the renovations.
The restaurant, however, shuttered in March 2020 due to the Covid pandemic and has remained closed since. But the now tossed lawsuit said that the father and son team stopped paying rent two years earlier.
The lenders eventually sued the Poulakakoses and their business partners, alleging that they had committed fraud by misrepresenting their own finances before ceasing their rent payments. They also accused the borrower of squeezing all the fees and distributions they could for themselves out of the project before closing the restaurant and blaming the closure on the pandemic, despite admitting later on that their finances had been “underwater” long before.
However, the judge dismissed the lawsuit, stating that the claims of fraud were not substantiated.
While the Harbor House remains shuttered, nonprofit the Battery Conservancy proposed in 2021 to change the now-vacant Pier A space into an embarkation point for the ferries that travel to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, as reported by The Broadsheet. The proposal took on new urgency after the ferry operator stated that the current docking space on the Battery was dilapidated nearly to the point of dysfunction.