A Restaurant That Helped Change Bryant Park Is Losing Its Lease

Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll get an update on the squabble over the lease renewal for a restaurant that is a centerpiece of Bryant Park. We’ll also find out about the city’s plan to try to lengthen life expectancy after a dramatic drop during the pandemic.

Change is coming to Bryant Park, where a long-established restaurant, the Bryant Park Grill, is losing its lease.

It will be replaced by a place run by the peripatetic chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who presides over the market and food hall at the South Street Seaport as well as a dozen other restaurants in New York City.

The Bryant Park Corporation, the nonprofit management company that is the landlord of the 9.6-acre park behind the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, has decided to award the lease to Vongerichten’s Jean-Georges Management “to develop new food and beverage concepts,” with Seaport Entertainment Group as the operator. Seaport Entertainment owns 25 percent of Vongerichten’s company.

“It’s an iconic space in New York,” Vongerichten said on Tuesday, adding that he wanted to “change it with new flavors” and mentioning “local products, local farmers, local fishermen.”