Crew Hospitality, the New York-based group founded by New Orleans natives Alex and Miles Pincus, has been selected to develop and operate a new restaurant and bar inside the pavilion at Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park. The group is targeting a spring 2027 opening for the venue, which sits along the Mississippi River at the foot of Canal Street.
The arrangement extends beyond a single restaurant lease. Crew will manage the pavilion venue and also oversee food and beverage service for festivals and events held along the riverside park, giving the operator a role in some of the highest-traffic outdoor programming in the city. The park hosts large events including French Quarter Festival, which expanded into the new riverfront space this spring.
The concept is expected to draw on Crew’s waterfront work in New York, particularly Drift-In in Manhattan, a seafood-focused venue built around open, sunlit space. Crew built its reputation on riverside and nautical-themed concepts, several of them in Manhattan, and the pavilion site gives the group a comparable setting on the Mississippi. Representatives for Crew declined to comment on details of the project.
The selection adds to a growing local footprint for the Pincus brothers. Their Holywater seafood restaurant and oyster bar is now open at 622 Conti Street in the French Quarter, reactivating a three-story building that had sat empty since 2019, and the pair previously brought the Seaworthy concept to the Ace Hotel.
The pavilion sits within a riverfront corridor that has seen substantial public and philanthropic investment this year. The first major phase of Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park at the Governor Nicholls Wharf opened in April as a $30 million project, converting roughly six acres of former wharf into landscaped park with playgrounds, river-view seating, and plazas. The work is part of a 2.25-mile riverfront corridor linking Spanish Plaza to Crescent Park, with philanthropic support from the Goldring family and Woldenberg foundations.
For the riverfront, bringing in an experienced operator with a festival and events mandate gives the park a commercial anchor that can generate year-round activity rather than relying on event-day traffic alone. With the Four Seasons, Riverwalk, and the Westin all within a short walk, the pavilion venue will compete for the same visitor base that has driven hospitality investment past $1 billion in the city this year.
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