The Battery Park City Authority approved a 25-year sublease today the building of an oyster bar, event venue and visitor center at Pier A at the Battery by the Dermot Company and Harry and Peter Poulakakos, who already operate several restaurants in Lower Manhattan.

In separate restaurant developments downtown, Danny Meyer, the owner of Shake Shack restaurants and Gramercy Tavern, announced he would operate a restaurant to be known as the North End Grill at Battery Park City, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced that plans to create a new version of Windows on the World at the top for 1 World Trade Center at Ground Zero have been scrapped.

The Pier A project is part of an attempt to revitalize the very attractive building overlooking the harbor that started in 2008 when the city gave $30 million to the Battery Park City Authority, which has made repairs to the foundation and replacement of the pier's deck," according to an article today by Lisa Fiskenscher and Marine Cole at crainsnewyork.com.

The Poulalakos family's restaurants include Bayards, Harry's Steak House, Ulysses, Financier Patisserie, Hary's Italian, Vintry and Adrienne's Pizzabar.

The pier was built by the city in 1886 and four years later a three-story front section and metal siding were added and in 1919, a clocktower was added as the nation's first World War I memorial. It was built for the New York Harbor Police and the Department of Docks and was designated a New York City landmark in 1975 but it has been vacant for nearly 20 years.

The three-story building at Pier A is nearly 38,700 square feet. There's also a public promenade that wraps around three sides of the building, as well as an upland public plaza of nearly 34,000 square feet. The subtenants will be responsible for the fit-out of the interior of the building and will have some use of the public promenade and the plaza.

Peter Poulakakos noted that there will be an oyster bar and a beer garden on the lower level of the building, while the restaurant on the second level will be more focused on fine dining and will have two rooms for private dining and events catering.

The rehabilitation of the core and shell of the Pier A building is currently in progress. Construction on the new restaurant will begin as soon as the authority is done with its work, the article said.

The Union Square Hospitality Group, which is headed by restaurateur Danny Meyer, announced today that it will open a restaurant that will called North End Grill at North End Avenue and Murray Street in Battery Park City at the end of the year, according to an article at wsj.com by Sumathi Reddy.

The article said that the restaurant, described as a "new American eatery and bar featuring refined grill cooking with an emphasis on seafood," rounds out a trio of Meyer outposts in the neighborhood, adding that last July his company announced plans to open Blue Smoke and Shake Shack eateries there, along with an unspecified fine-dining restaurant.

North End Grill's executive chef and partner will be Floyd Cardoz, the former chef and partner at Tabla, Meyer's Indian restaurant which closed at the end of 2010 after a 12-year run, the article said.

An article by Douglas Feiden today in The New York Daily News said that Port Authority executive director Chris Ward said that "we do not build vanity projects at the top of tall buildings. The article said that "officials close to the project" said that both the authority and "the Durst Organization, its development partner, had concluded a destination eatery was designed to be a giant money-loser."

Windows on the World had been a very glamorous, expensive and famous restaurant at the top of one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.