A Downtown Renovation With a New Flavor

[richardscalgary]

A corner of Lower Manhattan that has long been thick with corporate towers but thin on interesting cuisine is about to get a vast new food court filled with the kind of small, idiosyncratic vendors normally found in Brooklyn or on the Lower East Side.

Eight “fast casual” restaurants have signed leases with Brookfield Office Properties to occupy a $40 million second-level gallery adjacent to the glass atrium and palm trees of the Winter Garden, in the World Financial Center. To be called the Dining Terrace, it will extend the length of a football field — 300 feet from north to south — and seat 600 customers in a central court overlooking the Hudson River. Six more tenants are expected to sign on before it opens early next year, as part of a $250 million renovation of the World Financial Center.