Having spent $100 million on renovations to draw office tenants, shoppers and commuters to the newly reopened Ferry Building, its developer and leasing agent want to take the fastest route to local hearts - through local stomachs.

When the development consortium, Ferry Building Investors, pushed the building's opening date to late March from October, it gave itself more time to line up additional food retailers to serve the roughly 10,000 ferry passengers who pass through the station daily, as well as the workers who will occupy 175,000 square feet of Ferry Building office space and potentially the tens of thousands of workers in the adjacent financial district.

The time has been well spent. With more than a dozen food retail leases signed, leasing agent Wilson Meany Sullivan has reason to believe those shops and restaurants, along with a farmer's market, will help attract enough foodies to spare its restaurants and office space the troubles endemic in the rest of the city, where office leases come cheap and restaurants are struggling to stay afloat. The company said half the food retail space is now leased, with letters of intent signed on another 30 percent of it.

And it's not just any old collection of establishments. Wilson Meany Sullivan Managing Partner Chris Meany spent four years wooing top culinary artisans from throughout the Bay Area, places that had won reputations for being at the forefront of the locally originated movement over the last two decades toward fresh, organic and sustainably grown ingredients and slowly crafted food.

"It is perceived to be a very special community, and there has been an idea percolating in this community for a long time that 'wouldn't it be good for all these people to come together?'," Meany said. "If they would come together in this great hall ... that would draw people from around the world and from around San Francisco, and be a magnet to pull them to the Ferry Building."

Meany said he could have brought in more money with chain stores - "we could have leased the building three times over to fast food restaurants" - but the goal from the start was to build something special, something expressly for independent gourmets and foodies.

"We think we are building a platform and institution in the Bay Area that will be successful for years," he said.

The site is slated to house four sit-down restaurants, including Marketbar, a restaurant created by the backers of Biz and Florio Cafe & Bar, and Taylor's Automatic Refresher, the St. Helena gourmet drive-in. Two other restaurants, which Meany declined to identify, have signed letters of intent. There is also a variety of smaller places, all selling and serving various foods, beverages and baked goods. Tenants include Acme Bread Co., the gourmet Berkeley bakery; Point Reyes' Cowgirl Creamery; Marshall's Hog Island Oyster Co.; Peet's Coffee & Tea of Emeryville; McEvoy Ranch, the Petaluma maker of olive oil; and Brentwood's Frog Hollow Farm, known for its organic peaches.

The food sellers at the building will occupy 68,000 square feet in a ring around the first floor, with some facing the Embarcadero and some the Bay.

Closely tied to the building's retail appeal, and at least as important from a community perspective, is the Embarcadero farmer's market, now operating at Green Street and the Embarcadero, which will now operate on the outside of the building four days per week.