Deal May Bring Aquarium to Times Square

New York's Times Square may be getting a new tenant: a seven-story aquarium.
Jerry Shefsky, a Toronto-based developer, said on Wednesday that he has signed a preliminary agreement with the landlord of an office tower on the western edge of Times Square to go forward with the $100 million project. He would install tanks featuring sharks, rays, penguins, otters, and other animals in the bottom floors of the 40-story building, known as 11 Times Square, hoping to attract some of the 35 million people who pass through Manhattan's major crossroads every year.
Mr. Shefsky, 76 years old, has built aquariums and shopping centers around the world. He cautioned in an interview that the lease agreement for 11 Times Square isn't yet final. But he said he may start building out the space as early as this April with the hope of opening the aquarium in September 2011.
A deal with Mr. Shefsky would be a long-awaited bit of good news for the developer of 11 Times Square, SJP Properties Inc., and its major financial backer, a real-estate fund managed by Prudential Financial Inc. SJP, led by New Jersey developer Steven Pozycki, broke ground on the tower in 2007 without having first secured a tenant, hoping that the hot Manhattan office market would bring sky-high rents as the building neared completion. But the market turned—New York City office rents plummeted 20% in 2009, according to Reis Inc.—and SJP's empty tower on the corner of 42nd Street and 8th Avenue has become a symbol of commercial-property woes.
SJP is also negotiating to lease 400,000 square feet in the building to law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, said a person familiar with the matter. The building is slated to be completed in the next few months.
A Prudential spokeswoman declined to comment, and Proskauer didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Pozycki declined to comment through a spokesman.
The proposed aquarium's unusual placement inside a skyscraper means it'll be different from most big-ticket fish exhibits. Preliminary plans call for about half of the floor space to be taken up by water exhibits, Mr. Shefsky said, while the rest will be occupied by things like a pirate museum and educational displays about the marine world. "It's anything but an aquarium in the format you might imagine," he said. Mr. Shefsky's company, Aquarium Developments Corp., also built the Newport Aquarium near Cincinnati, Ohio.
The Times Square project would likely have fewer fish than some of the high-profile aquariums built in recent years. Mr. Shefsky says he currently expects his tanks to contain about 600,000 gallons of water. Atlanta's Georgia Aquarium, which opened in 2005, has more than eight million gallons of water.
In snowy Midtown on Wednesday, there seemed to be some demand for another tourist attraction in the area. "Would I really like to go to an aquarium? No, I have one in Long Beach," said Helene Mayer, a 44-year-old occupational therapist from Los Angeles who had brought her 9-year-old son to the M&M World store in Times Square. But, she said, "now we're looking for another indoor activity to do," and an aquarium "would offer kids a great opportunity in a fun area."
Mr. Shefsky said he has lined up financial backers to help pay for the aquarium's installation, which will cost more than $100 million. He declined to name those backers, and he said he wasn't ready to release a rendering of the aquarium. Mr. Shefsky discussed his plans after an inquiry from a reporter.