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Next month, the developers of the vast new complex on the site of the former Coliseum at Columbus Circle will unveil one of the most ambitious restaurant projects ever to hit New York City.
The project, in the future home of AOL Time Warner, will feature six eateries from some of the restaurant world's biggest names. They will be massed in what amounts to a luxury food court atop the $1.7 billion complex's expansive retail mall.
Serious talks are taking place with Phil Suarez, a key business partner of Jean-Georges Vongerichten-the New York chef who has rare bragging rights to never having had a flop-and are said to be under way with Charlie Palmer, chef and owner of the restaurant Aureole, who declined to comment.
"This will blow the socks off the city," declares Kenneth Himmel, president and chief executive of The Palladium Co., a partner in the mixed-use real estate development with The Related Cos. and Apollo Real Estate Advisors.
Or will it? Restaurant executives say that to fly, the project will have to overcome not one but several obstacles. For openers, they simply note that New Yorkers have never had much use for malls, and that for restaurants, in particular, malls have long been anathema.
What's more, the asking rents for restaurants at AOL Time Warner Center, around $100 per square foot for raw space, would qualify as ambitious even for highly desirable ground-floor locations. Space in the hot restaurant...