For the mall’s ten-year anniversary, its operator installed a ten-foot number ten made of flowers.
Photo: Anne Kadet
This month is the tenth anniversary of the Westfield World Trade Center mall — or the Oculus mall, as most call it — the combination train hub–shopping center I’ve passed through maybe a hundred times over the past decade without ever stopping to buy anything besides a cup of coffee. In fact, I have a running joke with a friend: Every time I pass through the soaring rib cage of a space, I text him, “Now entering the Oculus!” and, a minute later, “Now exiting the Oculus!”
I’m not alone. I’ve been asking around, and it seems as if everyone I talk to knows the Oculus, visits the Oculus, and does not shop at the Oculus. A few weeks ago, I conducted an informal inventory of the hub’s storefronts that seemed to confirm my suspicions about how the mall is faring: Of the 103 shop spaces I observed, 26 were empty, amounting to a vacancy rate of 25 percent — three times higher than the national mall average of 8.5 percent. So what’s ailing the Oculus?
It surely doesn’t have a foot-traffic problem. Thanks to its central location connecting the PATH train, 12 subway lines, the 9/11 Memorial, and One World Trade Center, the mall gets 60 million visits a year from commuters, tourists, office workers, and nearby residents. And those numbers are growing: Mall officials say traffic is up 14 percent so far in 2026. It’s not managed by novices, either. Its operator, Westfield, profitably runs more than a dozen malls across the U.S. with an average vacancy rate of 5.2 percent. It knows what it’s doing — at least elsewhere.
And yet, the Westfield WTC has struggled with a surfeit of empty space since the beginning. At its recent August 7 “rededication ceremony,” which featured a towering flower installation in the shape of the number ten and an old-fashioned ribbon cutting with giant scissors, Westfield executives spent little time dwelling on the mall’s past performance and spoke instead about a hoped-for future. “What excites me most is what lies ahead,” said SVP of development Kim Brewer. “I can’t wait to see the next chapter begin.”
Officials with Westfield, the Port Authority, and Downtown Alliance cutting the ribbon at the mall’s tenth-anniversary rededication ceremony.
Photo: Anne Kadet
When the mall at the Oculus opened in 2016, Westfield positioned it as a luxury and fashion retail hub similar to neighborhoods such as Soho, the Meatpacking District, and midtown. It had paid $1.4 billion to lease the commercial and retail space from its owner, the Port Authority — a huge bet at the time. Upscale tenants included Breitling, Montblanc, Longines, Smythson, and Turnbull & Asser. “It was a beautiful project with a high-end tenant mix,” recalls retail consultant Michael Goldban, who was head of leasing at nearby rival Brookfield Place at the time. “Everybody was just thrilled with it.”
The decision to go high-end was driven by more than just a retail strategy. The Oculus mall was replacing the old Mall at the World Trade Center destroyed on 9/11, and some felt that any commercialization of the WTC site was disrespectful. The thinking: If we’re going to have stores there, they had better be classy! So tenants included an Eataly rather than a Sbarro, a Kate Spade over a TJ Maxx. The hitch: Brookfield Place, which connects to the Oculus via a long corridor under the West Side Highway, was already targeting affluent shoppers with Hermès, Gucci, and Burberry. “Brookfield was the more luxury destination, and Westfield wanted to compete for that customer and overshot their skis a little bit,” says Goldban, who now leads Magellan Realty Group, a retail-development, leasing, and advisory firm.
At its grand opening, the Oculus was only 60 percent occupied, and some of the announced tenants, including Michael Kors and Disney, never materialized. The estimated 200,000 commuters rushing through the hub on a typical weekday, meanwhile, found the options somewhat frustrating. “Who is shopping at Fendi during their commute to Jersey City?” is a typical comment on a long-running Reddit thread devoted to the mall. “Except for the Apple Store, everything is useless for people who use the Oculus the most,” wrote another. Commenters say they’d love to see a bookstore, a Home Depot, a Trader Joe’s, and a Target. “A bodega that sells scratch-offs — would stop by everyday!” wrote one Jersey City resident.
But if the initial mix was a misstep, not much could be done — many tenants signed ten-year leases, says Goldban. Now that these leases are expiring, however, there’s an opportunity for Westfield to rethink what the mall is. And Westfield says it’s doing just that. “The last couple of years, we’ve added a Duane Reade, we’ve added a Dunkin’, and a lot of those quick, grab-and-go options that really make sense, and they have been performing really well,” the mall’s senior general manager Marco Maldonado told me after the anniversary ceremony. “So now it’s, ‘How do we expand that offer even more with the right type of food and beverage, and the right type of convenience that can make your life a little easier?’”
A kiosk salesclerk kills time on her phone.
Photo: Anne Kadet
Later, in an email, Aly Abouzeid, Westfield’s vice-president for asset management and development, challenged the notion that the mall is struggling. When it comes to big brands like Apple and retail categories such as coffee, bakery, convenience grocery, health and beauty, and tech and gifts (including collectibles), there’s a high correlation between traffic and sales, he wrote, with tenants regularly exceeding $1,500 to $2,000 in sales per square foot, “comparable to some of the most productive retail locations across Manhattan.” The high vacancy rate I observed was a “strategic and temporary” component of a plan to improve the tenant mix, he added, which would include adding businesses “meeting more of the practical needs of the people who are already here.” While the mall plans to retain high-end options, he pointed out that the newest tenants include a Chick-fil-A and mid-priced hosiery and swimwear shop Calzedonia. This fall, Uniqlo will move into the old H&M space. Future tenants might include a supermarket, convenience stores, more prepared-food and coffee spots, and a sit-down restaurant.
A particular problem is the West Concourse, the long corridor connecting the Oculus to Brookfield Place and Battery Park City. By my count, 16 of the 28 storefronts lining the glossy pedestrian speedway are empty — a 57 percent vacancy rate. The ailing corridor is a “primary focus in the short term,” said Abouzeid. “We’ve learned a lot about how customers move through that space and what they need from it.” On the lower level of the two-story concourse, he said, Westfield is focusing primarily on the needs of daily commuters and office workers. “Footfall through this corridor alone rivals some of New York City’s busiest retail destinations, such as Chelsea Market, but moves at a much faster pace,” he wrote. Its most successful tenants have been coffee, convenience grocery, and “grab-and-go” dining. For the upper deck, Westfield is aiming for a new kind of tenant altogether; it has brought in a leasing agent who specializes in medical and health-care services to fill five of the vacant spaces. “You could come in, get your coffee, buy your groceries, and go to your dentist appointment all within one single campus — and then you can get on the train and go home,” Maldonado told me.
The mall’s West Concourse: a low row of vacant shops.
Photo: Anne Kadet
The challenge, says Greg Portell, a partner with the retail practice of management-consulting firm Kearney, will be catering to the commuter crowd, officegoers, and area residents without turning off the mall’s other constituencies — destination shoppers including tourists and residents from other parts of the city who are looking for an exceptional experience. “They’re down in the World Trade area. You don’t want a bunch of low-end stores,” he says. “You want people to go down and go, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ Not, ‘Oh, I picked up a can of soup today.’”
“Unfortunately, you don’t really get to choose because all three of them are there,” he continued. “You have to tailor it to all three because word of mouth is a powerful driver.” In other words, if the Oculus starts being seen as a discount, convenience hub, you might lose the shopper looking for a unique gift.
But assuming the new retail-mix strategy somehow appeals to everyone at the Oculus, there are still enormous challenges facing the mall. Among them: the appeal of the area as a shopping destination in general. According to a report released by the city comptroller in June, the overall retail-vacancy rate for lower Manhattan — that’s everything below Chambers Street — is 21 percent, nearly twice as high as the citywide average. The high vacancy rate at the Oculus may actually reflect the wider problem of a lower Manhattan retail-space glut. Is there simply too much space downtown to go around?
The high vacancy rate is puzzling. According to the Alliance for Downtown New York, the area’s business-improvement district, lower Manhattan is booming. Its affluent residential population has grown 10 percent since the start of COVID to 70,000, making it the fastest-growing neighborhood in the city, and there are another 4,900 new units planned or under construction to meet the demand for residential housing. During roughly the same period, the area also added 1,000 hotel rooms, bringing the total to 8,100, and saw its visitor count double, to 10 million. The private-sector job base, meanwhile, is holding steady at 335,000.
The problem isn’t too much storefront space for too few shoppers, says Alliance president Jessica Lappin. It’s a mismatch between the demands of the evolving neighborhood and what some businesses are still offering—expense-account lunch rather than Sunday brunch, for example. But things are turning around. Last year, she says, there were 90 store openings — far more than the 24 closings. And the newer businesses tend to be a better fit. There’s more food, service, and entertainment options appealing to residents, like the 14th-floor squash courts on Pearl Street, she said. “Now you see grooming stores for dogs — we wouldn’t have had that a decade ago.”
She doesn’t think lower Manhattan’s progress will come at the mall’s expense: “There’s a difference between a shop you’re going to find in a commuter stop versus a shop you’ll find along the streets. They complement each other.”
The Banana Republic on a weekday morning.
Photo: Anne Kadet
There’s no denying the Oculus is a trophy location, at least on the design front. The $4 billion white steel, glass, and marble design by the Spanish Swiss architect Santiago Calatrava — alternately compared to a cathedral and a whale carcass — looks and feels like nothing else on the planet, much less a mall. And therein lies another challenge: While it’s visually spectacular, the steel ribs obscure storefront names and window displays, and even the biggest retail spaces, like the open Épicerie Boulud on the ground level, feel like afterthoughts in the vast, soaring space. With its four subterranean levels and three wings, even Calatrava fans admit the space can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate. “It’s the only architecture that has ever made me literally cry with sheer frustration just trying to find the exit” is a typical comment in online architecture forums.
When I took the time to wander the 365,000-square-foot mall this month instead of simply passing through, the experience was like one of those weird dreams where you keep discovering new rooms in your apartment. Along the winding corridors, I discovered shops I never knew existed: a Banana Republic, a Sephora, and a store where you can purchase a framed, 47-by-47-inch print of your scanned eye for $5,490. To find Eataly, I had to locate the South Concourse, take an escalator to the second level, pass a long row of boutiques, dodge the saleslady wanting to put magnesium drops in my eye, take a left at the Swatch store, hang a right at the Dunkin’, pass the Auntie Anne’s and Chick-fil-A, take a short set of stairs past the R train entrance to a street-level lobby, and make a U-turn at the Banana Republic before boarding another escalator going up in the opposite direction, which led — finally — to the last escalator leading up to the Eataly entrance.
The long, winding journey ends at Eataly.
Photo: Anne Kadet
“The Oculus is one of the most architecturally distinctive transportation and retail environments in the world, and its scale and design create a very different customer journey from a traditional shopping center,” Abouzeid acknowledges. “We’re always looking at ways to make that experience as intuitive as possible and to help visitors discover more of what the property has to offer.”
But there’s no easy fix. A close examination of the mall’s wayfinding system (designed and maintained by the Port Authority, not Westfield), brings home how the complicated and counterintuitive layout of the Oculus might defeat even the world’s most genius design team. A set of signs at the entrance of the South Concourse, for example, simultaneously tries to direct visitors to the Church Street exit, the 11 subway trains at Fulton Street Center, the separate entrances for the 1 and E lines, the PATH train, the St. Nicholas National Shrine, 3 and 4 WTC, the 9/11 Memorial, One World Observatory, One WTC, Eataly, the balcony level, the South Concourse, elevators, escalators, concierge services, bicycle parking, family rooms, and — as sort of an afterthought — shops and dining.
Boarding an elevator in my effort to reach the street-level observation platform on the mall’s east end, meanwhile, I was stumped by a series of buttons labeled C1, C2UL, C2LL and C3M. I was not the only person in the lift who had no idea what they signified, but no matter — none of them got me where I wanted to go. The Port Authority is clearly trying to compensate for the mazelike layout. On my last visit, I was approached three times in one hour by its smiling custom assistance staffers in red blazers, asking if I needed help finding anything. But the agency says it currently has no concrete plans to overhaul the signage. I suppose the next time I want to grab a coffee or a protein bar, I’ll have to be very determined — and make sure I leave a little time to get lost.
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