From my experience working around there in the mid-2000's, the adjacent buildings didn't have any food courts, maybe some mom&pop bagel shop, otherwise you had to trek much further to the basement of The Bay, or far to the west in the PATH.
I suspect until the pandemic they were very likely the "I only have five minutes to get something" and/or the "it's good enough" option to keep it going for the office workers in that area, so no modernization was contemplated. Now it's toast.
Also, I wonder if there's some structural complications with a renovation there.
As you can see in that photo, this food court segment is oddly about three feet higher than the PATH to the west, and maybe that's because it sits over the ramp into the City Hall parking garage?
Perhaps that would make any renovation more complicated if they would need to close that ramp to do a total gut renovation?