Walk down Richmond Terrace on a Friday night this summer and you'll hit a wall of noise before you hit the water: a sold-out concert bleeding out of Snug Harbor, cheers rolling off SIUH Community Park after a FerryHawks home run, a line for the ferry that wraps twice around the terminal plaza. Keep walking past all of it and you'll reach Empire Outlets, the 350,000-square-foot retail complex on the waterfront. Half its storefronts are dark.
The contrast between the summer crowds at nearby venues and the vacant storefronts at Empire Outlets is part of the North Shore's story this season.
Empire Outlets' Retail History
Empire Outlets opened on May 15, 2019, with plans for as many as 100 designer stores across its plaza and food deck. The site only ever had room for about 70. By that November, just thirty were operating. Nordstrom Rack, one of the complex's anchor tenants, announced its exit in 2024, and by the time the mall went into foreclosure the numbers told a blunt story: it owed $38 million to Sterling National Bank and $174 million to Goldman Sachs' Urban Investment Group, and it was still roughly 60 percent vacant when it sold at auction for $10 million in September 2023.
Empire Outlets sits closer to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal than almost any commercial address in the borough. Its location is one part of the waterfront story, alongside the venues described below.
Planning a New Future for the Waterfront
In June 2025, the NYC Economic Development Corporation began a new planning process for both Empire Outlets and the former New York Wheel site next door. By November, NYCEDC, City Council Member Kamillah Hanks, and Borough President Vito Fossella had unveiled a new vision that leans on the city's Staten Island North Shore Action Plan and points toward housing, open space, and neighborhood-serving stores rather than another outlet mall.
Getting there requires a formal rezoning, and NYCEDC says it will keep engaging Staten Islanders on the site's future mix of uses through the rest of 2026.
What's Actually Filling the Waterfront Right Now
While that process plays out on a city timeline, the North Shore's actual summer has been running on a completely different set of venues:
SIUH Community Park, the ballpark formerly known as Richmond County Bank Ballpark, is home to the Staten Island FerryHawks under new manager Carlos Mirabal for the 2026 season. On June 28, the FerryHawks closed out a six-game series against the Long Island Ducks with a lopsided 17-3 loss, the kind of head-to-head series that still pulls a crowd to a 7,000-seat bowl on a weeknight. Single-game tickets start around $12, with an average closer to $51, a fraction of what a Yankees or Mets night costs across the harbor.
Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden kept its free outdoor programming running this summer, including an August 9 concert from the Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band with Charlie Aponte and Judy Santos, and a Shakespeare in the Park giveaway for a staging of The Winter's Tale set for August 22.
Maker Park Radio's Future Roots Festival brought a live DJ night with food and beverage vendors to Stapleton on June 20, kicking off a summer of Saturday programming at Maker Park.
Earlier this summer, the waterfront hosted an official 2026 World Cup Fan Zone steps from the ferry terminal, drawing crowds for live match broadcasts against a Lower Manhattan skyline backdrop, a level of global programming this stretch of shoreline had never carried before.
St. George Theatre, which has been running continuously since its opening night on December 4, 1929, will mark its 97th anniversary this December. Its 2026 slate mixes nostalgia (sing-along screenings of Aladdin and The Little Mermaid under its "Better on the Big Screen" series) with national names on the fall calendar, including Eddie Griffin on September 18 and George Lopez on October 9. The theater is also running a 2:1 matching-donation campaign through the Staten Island Foundation as it heads toward its centennial.
The ballpark, the theater, and Snug Harbor each offered their own programming this summer.
An Empty Mall and a Full Calendar
It would be easy to read the Empire Outlets situation as bad news for the neighborhood and the concert calendar as good news. But both are part of this waterfront's story.
This stretch of shoreline has a minor-league team with its own home ballpark, a theater nearing its 97th anniversary with deep community ties, and a botanical garden hosting free jazz on a summer weekend. Alongside those venues, the city's planning vision for Empire Outlets points toward housing, open space, and neighborhood-serving retail.
That broader picture matters for anyone trying to read what's actually happening to this part of Staten Island, beyond the headline vacancy numbers. A half-empty retail complex doesn't tell the whole story of a waterfront with a full event calendar.
What to Watch Through the Rest of 2026
The practical takeaway is to keep an eye on the FerryHawks' remaining home schedule, St. George Theatre's fall lineup, and Snug Harbor's upcoming programming. NYCEDC's public engagement process runs through the rest of the year, and the future mix of uses at the site remains under discussion.
That's one part of the North Shore's story this season: an active waterfront calendar alongside a site whose future is still being planned.
Asset CRG tracks these shifts in Queens, Brooklyn, and across the boroughs because they shape what a corridor is worth long before a zoning vote makes it official. If you own property near a changing waterfront, or you're weighing whether a corridor like this one fits your next acquisition, Asset CRG can walk you through what the data actually supports. Request a Property Valuation & Off-Market Access to see where your next opportunity might be hiding.
