Union Sq. WiFi Is Running

The latest gossip from The Villager:

While the fate of two prime-time storefronts on the south side of Union Square has yet to be determined, recent whispers have indicated that more big-box stores could be headed for the space currently occupied by a pair of retail behemoths.

Electronics retailer Circuit City, which filed for bankruptcy late last year, will shutter its location on 14th St. at Fourth Ave. at the end of next month as part of plan to auction off all its properties and leases nationwide.

A sales associate at the store said that Walmart was interested in the space, which is owned by developer The Related Companies, although a New York-based spokesperson for Walmart said the big-box chain currently has no announced projects in the city.

Best Buy, which has a store less than a mile away on W. 23rd St., is another name that has been floated as a future tenant. A company spokesperson said the electronics-and-entertainment retailer does not currently have any plans for the site and could not speculate on potential deals.

Rumors have also swirled for months over the possible departure of the adjacent Virgin Megastore, where Related — which owns a controlling interest of the Virgin stores — is also the landlord.

“We’ve made no decision about that property,” Related spokesperson Joanna Rose told Mixed Use, echoing her statements to this paper from last May regarding Virgin’s long-speculated exit. However, Rose did confirm that brokerage Winick Realty Group continues to handle the leasing assignment for the nearly 60,000-square-foot property.

A spokesperson for the Union Square Partnership did not have any information on who could open in either space, where brokers have pegged asking prices for the marquee addresses at upward of $300 to $350 per square foot.

Simply Grid announced today that it has launched a food cart electrification pilot in New York City’s Union Square. This is the first example of a mobile food vendor on New York City’s public streets using grid electricity rather than a noisy, polluting generator. Citywide, more than 3,000 mobile food carts create the equivalent pollution emissions of approximately 10,000 cars. This pilot, launched in conjunction with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, Con Edison, the NYC Department of Transportation, and Closed Loop Advisors, will last for up to a year and abate up to 9 metric tons of CO2.

Simply Grid’s technology allows lot owners and municipalities to provide grid electricity to mobile food vendors which makes them cleaner, quieter, and more profitable. Electricity is made available to these vendors via outlets in industry standard electricity pedestals which have been customized with proprietary metering controllers. The controllers connect wirelessly to Simply Grid’s cloud-based platform which manages customer accounts, metering, and billing. The system allows vendors to initiate service with their mobile phones and connect to the electric grid with cables they already use with their generators. Grid electricity is a significantly cheaper energy source for food vendors, and it also eliminates the pollution and noise associated with running a generator.

After a very long run, El Cantinero on University Place has served its last quesadilla. Adios!

It doesn’t look like much now, but a new bar, Everything’s Jake, is coming to 13th St. between University and Broadway. It’ll be your place to go for a nightcap after dinner at PF Chang’s.

From Eater.com:

The big former space of iconic Union Square diner the Coffee Shop will soon be split into four new retail spaces — three of which will be reserved for new restaurants, according to the property manager.

No leases have been signed yet, writes Eric Gural, executive managing director of Newmark Knight Frank, who would not comment on rumors that Chase Bank is a potential option to take over the space. Another source associated with the property confirmed that Chase Bank is in talks to take over the non-restaurant space, though he also said it is not final.

Brazilian-ish restaurant Coffee Shop, known for its fashionable staff and cultural gravitas via appearances on shows like Sex and the City, closed earlier this month after nearly 30 years at the corner of 16th Street and Union Square West. It was a trailblazer when it opened in 1990 and became a popular spot for celebrities, tourists, and locals seeking a place near the transit hub, particularly because its huge neon sign made it an easy landmark.

Owners said this summer that the restaurant had to close in part due to high rents, but Gural notes that there is still time on the restaurant lease, contesting that the departure was because of a rent hike.

Number one advocate of old New York Jeremiah Moss first posted the rumor that Chase Bank might replace Coffee Shop, calling it “yet another example of New York City soul snatching.” Besides the new tenancy, a tipster told him that the Coffee Shop sign might be redone to say “Chase”; Gural did not comment on this rumor. Incidentally, the tenant before Coffee Shop was an actual coffee shop called Chase, and Coffee Shop got its name from Chase’s neon sign, which it kept