Union Square 1882
Not exactly Occupy Wall Street, but this is what Union Square looked like on Labor Day 1882. Fun parade.
Similar Posts
New UPS Procedure on 14th St. Side
ByDonDue to an increasing number of thefts of UPS packages which are left unattended by the UPS delivery man outside shareholders’ doors, the procedure will now change. UPS will no longer leave packages unattended upstairs. Instead, he will place them behind the locked door off the lobby, to which he and Niall will have a key. A notification of package arrival will be on the bulletin board. You can then get in touch with Niall to get the package.
Please address any questions to Niall.
New 14th St. Tech Hub Will Include a Food Hall
ByDonfrom 6sqft:
Pioneering food hall operator Urbanspace is opening its latest outpost at Union Square reports the NY Post. They’ve leased 10,000 square feet at Zero Irving, the contested tech hub on 14th Street that will serve as office space, a technology training center and incubator, co-working spaces, and an event space when it opens in the first half of 2021.
Located at 124 East 14th Street, at the former site of the P.C. Richard & Son building, Zero Irving has faced opposition for years, as local preservationists and community groups felt that the rezoning required for the development should have included protections for the surrounding neighborhood, which is largely low-rise and residential.
Nevertheless, the $200 million project has been under construction for the past year. Despite the thousands of small business closings around the city, UrbanSpace founder and president Eldon Scott is confident in what will be his company’s fifth food hall in New York City. “We have the ideal business model to help the New York culinary world recover,” he told the Post.
UrbanSpace’s other locations are Urbanspace Vanderbilt near Grand Central (the first location, which opened in 2015), Lexington Avenue and 51st Street, 135 West 50th Street, and 152 West 52nd Street. They’re also behind the holiday markets in Grand Central, Union Square, Columbus Circle, and Bryant Park, as well as seasonal food market pop-ups like those at Madison Square and the Garment District.
Panera Bread to Arrive
ByDonThe suburbanization of Union Square continues with the arrival of the Panera Bread chain on Union Square East between 14th and 15th Streets.
7-11 Is On the Way
ByDonWord is that the neighborhood’s first 7-11 convenience store will move in on 14th St. near 6th Ave.
BlueWater Grill and Republic Destined to Close
ByDonBecause the rent is to damned high….here are the details, courtesy of Eater.com:
After over 20 years in Union Square, noodle shop Republic and seafood restaurant Blue Water Grill will both close by the end of the year. The culprit is outrageously high rent, with Blue Water Grill facing $2 million-plus annually, Bloomberg reports.
It’s part of a larger issue that Bloomberg breaks down in greater detail: Restaurants, like Union Square Cafe, which faced this same issue in 2014, open in less desirable neighborhoods with affordable 10- to 25-year leases. Then, in that time period, those restaurants contribute to the neighborhood increasing in value, which in turn causes landlords to raise rents to unsustainable highs once a lease is up.
Specifically, at Republic, the 3,800-square-foot restaurant went for $220,000 a year in 1995. Now, owner Jonathan Morr will vacate the space three-and-a-half years early so he can split the difference between what [the landlord] gets from us and what he’ll get from the next tenant, and call it a day, Morr tells Bloomberg. Marty Feinberg, of Winner Communications, which owns Republic’s building, says that taxes on it have gone up from $90,000 to $476,000 since the mid-’90s. (It’s not clear in the wording whether the landlord pays the taxes or it’s the responsibility of Republic as part of the lease agreement.)
Even restaurants with a lot of firepower behind them feel the squeeze. Tilman Fertitta, the tycoon behind Landry’s restaurant group, now owns Blue Water Grill, but still the rent increase to over $2 million a year is an amount at which can’t be successful,according to a Landry’s spokesperson. (This is also the group that just closed Isabella’s after 30 years on the Upper West Side.) The restaurant is currently searching for a new space. Uber-successful restaurateur Danny Meyer’s flagship Union Square Café” named after the very area it can no longer afford” vacated in 2015 after its rent increased fivefold over a 30-year period.
“That area is going to have to become a food desert” says realtor Leslie Siben of LB Realty Services LLC, because] no normal restaurateur with any experience would touch that as it is now.
This doom and gloom is met with a depressing solution: more food halls. Optimal Spaces broker Stephen Sunderland tells Bloomberg that it’s an appealing scenario for restaurants for its limited risk and lower costs to open” or close if needed. On the landlord and developer side, Smorgasburg co-founder Jonathan Butler recently commented on an unrelated panel that every developer wants a food hall at the bottom of their building or to anchor their big project.
There is no set date yet for the closures of Republic and Blue Water Grill. Stay tuned for more.
New Laundry Machines, the Details
ByDonSebco Laundry will no longer be accepting pre-paid cards to use the machines in our buildings. They are switching to an app which is called My Magic Pass. Residents will need to download the app and use the site code 7–11 EAST 13TH STREET.
You will be able to pay for use of the machines by using the app. Directions on how to use the app are posted in each laundry room.
If residents have money on their current cards Damian will provide an envelope to mail to Sebco to get refunded. Please let us know if you need an envelope. THere are also envelopes available in the laundry rooms.