Shanghai Square on 13th St. is now open for breakfast, serving traditional Chinese fare such as dim sum, Shanghai soup dumplings, and scallion pancakes. Is this innovative marketing or desperation? Is this bagel-and-croissant neighborhood ready for something so exotic at 8 in the morning?
Exemplifying a “15-minute neighborhood,” Union Square offers a wealth of local amenities including dining, shopping, culture, entertainment, and healthcare, all within walking distance or a short bike-ride. A true mixed-use neighborhood, Union Square’s residents, offices, retail, and institutions help sustain a vibrant public realm, with recent visitor traffic reaching 98% of 2019 levels. Office leasing remains active, with over 450K sf of office space leased since January 2022 across tech, finance, publishing, and other sectors.
Union Square’s 126 new businesses are comprised of 54% eateries, 28% retail, and 18% neighborhood services such as health and wellness. USP and creative partners work year-round to bring unique cultural, food, and art experiences to the square. Events like the eight-week Summer in the Square series, Urbanspace’s Holiday Market, and seasonal pop-ups draw foot traffic and support local business and arts communities.
Union Square-14th Street is home to high-profile institutions and headquarters across a range of sectors including technology, media, finance, and design. This rich mix of commercial tenants continues to be a major draw. Additionally, Union Square is center of gravity for live entertainment, arts, and culture. According to the data platform Replica, spending on entertainment doubled between 2019 and 2023 and visits in the district rose by 10% between 2022 and 2023, reaching a high of 98% compared to August 2019, a 10% higher average than Midtown Manhattan.
“Industry leaders like Microsoft, Sequoia Capital, and Wellington Management are choosing Union Square for their newest offices. Coupled with strong leasing activity at the ground floor, these new tenancies demonstrate the area’s appeal across sectors,” says Julie Stein, Executive Director, Union Square Partnership. “National retailers including Parachute, Crate & Barrel and Target are joining local favorites ABC Carpet, Fishs Eddy and Design Within Reach to solidify Union Square as a retail destination for interior design and home essentials.”
Union Square is a job center with 144K+ workers across sectors. Top employers include Con Edison, Mount Sinai Downtown, New York University, and The New School. In the coming year, the addition of national brands, and new and renovated hotels in the area will bring additional retail and hospitality job opportunities. This summer, Microsoft moved into its new 150K sf office space at 122 Fifth Avenue. The building’s ground floor is nearly fully leased with prominent brands Allbirds, Parachute, and Pandora, and Levain Bakery planning to open in early 2024.
Zero Irving (124 East 14th Street) has made headlines for leasing nearly 100% of its office space to major tech and finance firms including GameChanger (25K sf) and Sequoia Capital (13K sf). Additionally, the 10K sf Urbanspace food hall introduced 13 vendors to the 14th Street food scene. Over 65K sf of retail space has been leased since January 2022 to national brands, such as Petco’s 30k sf flagship location on Union Square East, and NYC favorites such as Hex & Co board game café, Sweet Chick, and Kazunori.
“Because we’re located in the heart of the NYC tech community, Civic Hall @ Union Square’s six floors of state-of-the-art training and conference center space at the new Zero Irving building will drive sustainable pathways to high-tech jobs. Civic Hall will help supply the tech workforce and spur innovation for industry leaders, the community, the City of New York, and beyond.” Seema Shah, Executive Director, Civic Hall
Looking ahead into the Fall, we are excited to welcome Upright Citizens Brigade, Crate & Barrel, Saatva, Mission Ceviche, and many more businesses to the neighborhood.
FÖRENA, a 50-unit luxury condominium development at 540 Sixth Avenue featuring 6K SF of new retail space for lease, finished construction in July 2023.
NYU is relocating the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service to 105 East 17th Street in Fall 2024, bringing over 860 students and over 200 faculty to Union Square.
Target will open a 33K SF store at 10 Union Square East, establishing over 75 new jobs and creating a retail anchor and local amenity for 14th Street.
What used to be PetCo at the northwest corner of Union Square will soon become Uniqlo.
Next week (January 16 to January 20), Superstructure work will continue at and 3rd, 4th and 5th floor levels. Sidewalk shed along 14th Street has been opened and we will open the sidewalk shed along 5th ave completing the sidewalk shed work.
The following week (January 23 to January 27), we will continue superstructure concrete and slabs on 3rd, 4th and 5th floor levels.
This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, January 14th for superstructure related activities between the work hours of 7AM and 5PM as permitted by the City. To control noise levels within the site, work activities will be limited to the placement of formwork and concrete, plumbing and electrical work, rebar for concrete placement, using the crane and equipment to support all activities. Safety horns are used, and required by law, to coordinate lifting with the crane and to alert the workers of the danger overhead. We have directed the operators to limit the use of horns to one short sounding and to use the crane later in the day so as to avoid any excess noise.
In addition to the normal work this Saturday we will be installing a new crane on 5th Ave. that will service the site for the duration of the project. During the installation 13th St. will be closed as well as some lanes on 5th Ave.
Bernie and Herb’s has opened at 28 East 16th St., the recent site of Flat Fix and the former site of the much missed Coffee Shop VIP Room. In a nostalgic twist, the owners have resurrected the Coffee Sign and will install it soon, so the facade will ultimately look like this:
The Observer reports:
Richard Cantor, a principle in the real estate marketing firm of Cantor-Pecorella, considers that the best of Village life consists of “very luxurious” apartments that incorporate the “open expanse” of loft-style living with the communal intimacy of townhouse residency. How serendipitous that Mr. Cantor’s firm should happen to be marketing the new(ish) eight-unit development at 12 East 13th Street co-engineered by DHA Capital and Continental Properties, which, he recently told the Observer, evinces just these same qualities! You know what they say, it’s always easier to sell a product that you truly believe in.
Certain longtime denizens of the Village, of course, would no-doubt quarrel with the tenets of Mr. Cantor’s appraisal, but his luck on East 13th Street has been pretty good so far. He reports that the development has made its first sale, of the full-floor Residence #4, which, he said, went for just shy of its $11.25 million asking price. The buyers, he said, were a young-ish family already living in the area and pleased indeed to find a place of this size–four bedrooms, 4,816 square feet–so near the heart of the neighborhood. The patriarch, naturally, is in finance.
But surely it was not size alone that lured the new owners; there is also, for example, the very luxurious open expanse of the condo’s townhouse-like intimacy to consider. The building, which was converted from a parking garage, retains a trace of automotive functionality, offering private parking spaces gratis for residents via a state-of-the-art robotic system. More creaturely comforts include high ceilings and big windows for plentiful light and air, custom Italian cabinetry, and bathrooms with generous portions of slab marble and Italian limestone.
Mr. Cantor said that he expects several more closures in the coming weeks, and occupancy no later than this summer. But for all you big spenders out there, the glass-sheathed triplex penthouse, we were given to understand, remains available. All you need to move in is $30.5 million, which seems eminently reasonable, for the very best of Village living.
Read more at http://observer.com/2015/03/best-of-the-village-garage-to-condo-development-notches-first-sale-around-11-25m/#ixzz3UYu20ZHe
State of Play Hospitality group has signed a lease to open Flight Club, a technology-enabled darts gaming facility, at 31 Union Square West in Flatiron, Manhattan. This will be the group’s first venue in Manhattan, and its ninth lease for the Flight Club brand in North America. The location will be a global flagship for the brand. Flight Club will occupy a 10,700-square-foot space at 31 Union Square West, a 16-story Renaissance Revival building designed by architect Bruce Price. The building was constructed in 1902-03 as the headquarters of the Bank of Metropolis. It was designated a city landmark in 1988 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.
The brand’s new location is scheduled to open in late 2025, joining the building’s history of housing venues like Zippers nightclub in the early 1980s, Metropolis restaurant and club in the late 1980s, and Blue Water Grill from 1996 until recently.
“We’ve been looking for the right real estate opportunity to land Flight Club in New York for over five years, and this site has the potential to be a genuine landmark for the city and the group,” said Toby Harris, CEO of State of Play Hospitality. “Both 31 Union Square as a building and the stunning split level Flight Club space are as close to the physical brief for the brand that we could wish for. I’m confident that by complementing and retaining the character of the building, we will be able to do it justice.”
Since launching the first U.S. Flight Club in Chicago in 2018, State of Play has expanded the brand to Boston, Houston, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Denver, with new venues set to open in Washington D.C. and Philadelphia in late 2024.