New Thai to University and 11th

Next week (January 7 to January 11),interior building material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on all floors inside the building as well as roof work.

The following week (January 14 to January 18),interior building material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on all floor as well as roof work.

This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, January 5th for interior and superstructure related activities between the work hours of 7AM and 5PM as permitted by the City.

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?

Adding them all up:

–Blue Bottle

–NewsBar

–Joe

–La Maison de Croque Monsieur

–Unnamed Japanese Bakery not yet open

–Blue Stripes Cacao Shop

–Baked by Melissa

–Le Café Coffee

–Nutella Café

–Grey Dog

–Pret a Manger

–Maison Keyser

We’ve had Thai restaurants as downstairs neighbors before, and now a new one may be coming to replace Corkbuzz at 13 East 13th. A liquor license application has been filed by Varith, a “family-run” Thai restaurant that has a highly regarded sister operation called Valla Table in Hell’s Kitchen run by Chuck Valla, who was a private chef prior to opening this first place in 2021. Looks good.

Union Square is bustling, with robust foot traffic recovery, a strong roster of new retail and office tenants, and new mixed-use residential developments in the pipeline.

Key data points from the last 12 months highlight the district’s strengths:

1.1M SF of office
space leased in the
last 12 months

58K+ average daily
riders at Union Square
-14th Street Station

13% higher visitor
activity on Greenmarket
days in USQ

370K average daily
weekday trips to the
Union Square area

78K+ SF of ground floor
retail space leased in
the last 12 months

Visitor traffic reached
a high of 109% recovery
over January 2020

DISTRICT TRENDS

USQ IS THRIVING
∫ Union Square’s residents have strong spending power,
with average household incomes nearly 75% higher than the
Manhattan average.
∫ By the end of 2023, visitor traffic hit 109% of January 2020
levels, driven by Union Square’s vibrant mix of uses and the
steady return of office workers.
∫ Leading employers choose Union Square, and the biggest
new leases represent finance, technology, hospitality, and
fin-tech.
∫ Union Square grew as a job center, with its workforce
increasing by 12% since 2023 to reach 168K employees.
The tech and innovation sector remains strong, with over 45
companies located in the area.
∫ 43 new businesses opened in the past year, 60% of which
are food and beverage establishments. Indicating a return to
in-person dining, the number of new sit-down restaurants in
the district increased by 25% over the number that opened in
the previous year.

What an interesting painting. The view is to the east across the southeastern corner of the park, back when the statue of George Washington was located in a traffic island at that corner.