Developer Selling South Street Seaport

In recent development news, South Street Seaport -- or, as we like to call it, "Mystic on the Bay" -- is being sold. General Growth Properties, mired in debt from a disastrous acquisition in 2004, is selling the Seaport commercial space along with its other faux-colonial outdoor malls, Faneuil Hall in Boston and Harborplace in Baltimore. General Growth is still developing with the city (as "a non-lead partner," the Mayor hastens to point out) the East Harlem Media, Entertainment and Cultural Center, a commercial and residential complex that may or may not bring a Heartland Brewery, Sunglass Hut, and New York Yankees Clubhouse Shop to 125th Street. General Growth had been planning to substantially redevelop the Seaport, but that seems likely to be seriously delayed now, though we hear that, to raise capital, the Peking may be redeployed as a pirate ship.