As part of its plan to redevelop the waterfront section east of the FDR Drive at the South Street Seaport, General Growth Properties is planning a 495-foot-high, mixed-use tower to replace the long-vacant New Market Building on Pier 17.

The new tower, which is called the "Lighthouse," will house about 286 hotel rooms and 78 cooperative apartments and a hotel and will have a 78-foot frontage facing inland and a 130-feet frontage facing the East River.

It is part of its larger plan for Pier 17 that also includes new low-rise buildings with hotel and retail spaces.

SHoP Architects is designing the complex.

According to its website for the project, the exterior of the Lighthouse "will be reminiscent of the fishing nets and the ropes of ships that once docked at the Seaport."

The website states that "when it opens in 2014, the Lighthouse will attract residents, visitors and shoppers" and "it will drive traffic and revenue to the Seaport's historic district, improve pedestrian circulation, and establish a new architectural identity for the pier."

The company plans to demolish the "boxy shopping mall" on Pier 17 and to preserve and relocate the 1907 Tin Building that was the city's famous fish market to the eastern edge of Pier 17, "subject to the review and approval of the Landmarks Preservation Commission."

"The building's landmark exterior and key structural elements will undergo comprehensive preservation by a team of specialists from Jan Hird Pokorny Associates," according to the website, and "SHoP architects will renovate the building's 65,000-square-foot interior, transforming a building that was all but destroyed by a 1995 fire."

As part of its plans, the company plans to convert 30,000 square feet of space on the second floor of the three-story, red-brick Fulton Market Building on Fulton and Front Streets to "community space with programming crafted in part by the local neighborhood."

The plan more than doubles the existing open space on the pier and plans to extend the downtown street grid onto the pier. "Five total acres of open space," the website stated, "will make the pier a place where East River Esplanade runners can stop for a rest, friends can meet for coffee at an outdoor cafe, musicians can give impromptu performances, and residents can linger with a book by the river."

The plan includes four new two-story retail buildings and two other structures that will be built above them and home to a boutique hotel, the first of which will be three stories tall and the second six stories. The two structures that contain the hotel will "hang" from steel rooftop girders and "appear as floating structures, suspended from steel cables hung from the girders" and the hotel buildings will be linked by two skybridges and have elements exposed "to evoke ship masts and utilitarian port equipment."

GGP took control of the Seaport after a merger in 2004 with The Rouse Company. It has its headquarters in Chicago.

The principals of SHoP are Christopher R. Sharples, Goren D. Sharples, William K. Sharples, Kimberly J. Holden and Gregg A. Pasquarelli. It won a Progressive Architecture Award for the design of the East River Waterfront Park in 2008 and its other projects have included The Porter House at 366 West 15th Street.

The exterior design of the Lighthouse is somewhat similar to the diagonal bracing at the Hearst Building on the southwest corner of Eighth Avenue and 57th Street but with much more of a lacy, filigreed design.