"Married to the Mall"

Target, Home Depot, and now, NY Times food critic, Frank Bruni, weighs in on the Time Warner Building - from a foodie's perspective, natch. (I have to say that this may not be so surprising to those who think that he inadequately fulfills his responsibility for setting the foodie standard appropriately for NYC - is his real strength in the impact of new restaurants on a city, not on the contributions of NYC restaurants?) On the whole, he finds the experience of going through a mall to the 4th floor where the restaurants - Per Se, Masa, Cafe Gray- "disconcerting:" having to go through the mall-like building, the cold, inhuman 4th floor where the restaurants are, and the disorienting wayfinding system.

Simply accepting the fact that the type of real estate provides the kind of economic shelter that would persuade chefs like Thomas Keller and Jean-Georges Vongerichten to open a restaurant is a cop out. As Patric Kuh, author of "The Last Days of Haute Cuisine," aptly said, "the malling of Midtown Manhattan has already happened...The Time Warner Center simply puts it under a roof."

It happens to be that economics hold the real power in real estate decisions - but timing is also key. Hot neighborhoods come and go, after all, and the economic climate changes. But decisions about a building designs have a relatively longer life. The retail area of Time Warner have infinitely less possibility than they would had they not been enclosed by a roof and polished to become like every suburban mall in America.

To the manager of Per Se who are having trouble juggling the demands of unwanted tourists - tourists could comfortably peek into your restaurant without undue attention if you were out on the street. Now, after trekking up 4 flights of escalators, they feel justified in wanting more than just a fleeting glimpse of what's going on in the shiny, blank building.