Jean-George Vongerichten’s Tin Building Has Closed

Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s nearly $200 million vision for New York’s Seaport is over. Seaport Entertainment Group announced this week that the Tin Building by Jean-Georges closed on Monday, February 23. The end of the food hall comes after years of financial hemorrhaging, workforce upheaval, and a slow retreat from the ambitious scope that defined its opening.

It’s going to be replaced by the Balloon Museum, an interactive art experience, which will open in the more than 50,000-square-foot space in the summer of 2026.

“The density of people coming in was not there for the market,” Vongerichten tells Eater regarding the closing. “The restaurants were doing fine,” and Seaport Entertainment Group (SEG) is going to relocate them around the Seaport. “We’re proud of what we created there — years in the making and years of running it as a license.”

When the Tin Building debuted in August 2022, it was a new food epicenter for New York City — a sweeping destination occupying a restored Fulton Street Fish Market on the East River waterfront. The project was a collaboration with one of the most famous chefs in the country.

Vongerichten developed the concept with the Howard Hughes Corporation, which controlled much of the Seaport district; the result was six full-service restaurants, four bars, six counters, retail, and private dining at a total cost of $194.6 million. Vongerichten had his own history with what had been Fulton Street Fish Market. It was “the first place I came when I arrived in New York in 1986,” he said at the time.

Howard Hughes later spun the property off into SEG. By the end of 2024, the Tin Building had lost its parent company more than $83 million total — more than $100,000 a day on average, according to publicly available financial records. The company reported a $33 million loss for its share of the business in 2024 alone.

The warning signs accumulated fast. In late December 2024, at least 100 workers — primarily Latinx kitchen and custodial staff — lost their jobs after a surprise employment authorization check tied to an internal restructuring. The cuts were destabilizing. “Let it be known that this place is really not doing things right,” one current employee told Gothamist at the time.

By January 2025, abcV, Jean-Georges’ acclaimed vegetarian restaurant, had closed its Tin Building outpost. In April 2025, SEG announced it was shutting one of two commissary kitchens and scrapping underperforming concepts to stanch what executives called the “cash burn.”

SEG spent 2025 restructuring, collapsing the Tin Building joint venture, converting management agreements with Jean-Georges Restaurants into license agreements, and shrinking the footprint. It wasn’t enough.

The Balloon Museum, which has mounted exhibitions in Rome, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, and São Paulo, will take the space. It is a fitting successor as an experiential spot for the Instagram-and-tourist economy that the Seaport is positioned to serve.

Vongerichten acknowledged it in his response. “Looking forward to the Balloon Museum,” he says, “to bring more people to the Seaport.”