Year: 2017

  • Hyatt Union Square Makes Over Its Restaurant and Bar

    ByDon

    A new bar-restaurant is now open at the Hyatt Union Square

    At Bowery Road, a neighborhood American restaurant, Chef Ron Rosselli’s flavorful and thoughtfully prepared dishes are inspired by long relationships with local farmers and purveyors and loaded with seasonal produce from the Union Square Greenmarket. The restaurant takes its name from its location on 4th Avenue, which was formerly called Bowery Road when it served as the pathway to Peter Stuyvesant’s farm.

    Located directly off the lobby, Bowery Road is open from 7am-11pm for breakfast, lunch, dinner and weekend brunch.
    Rosselli has also worked at Locanda Verde and The Standard Grill.

    The hotel now also sports The Library of Distilled Spirits, which: “pays tribute to liquor makers and their craft with over 700 bottles made around the world. Explore the collection neat, or shaken and stirred into more than 150 classic cocktails. Barkeepers and encyclopedic volumes of single spirits will help you choose.”

    The Fourth and Singl, the hotel’s two dining-drinking options, have closed. The two new establishments are operated by APICII, “a multi-concept restaurant company.”

  • New Private Middle School to Open at 5th and 14th

    ByDon

    A private middle school partially funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has released renderings of its planned interior — which is slated to open near Union Square this fall.

    AltSchool, a private school that uses a technology-driven approach to design individualized lesson plans for students, has started building out its new school at 90 Fifth Ave. on the corner of 14th Street.

    The school, which charges about $30,000 tuition per year, revolves around a Montessori-like curriculum and bills itself as a hybrid tech company and education startup. It’s the brainchild of a team of Silicon Valley types with a long history in companies like Google, where AltSchool CEO Max Ventilla worked for more than a decade.

    The new space takes up an office-building floor previously occupied by The New School. It will be divided into two main areas — each of which have a classroom and group area space, as well as a larger communal area with a small kitchenette, a lunch area, and amphitheater-style seating.

  • The New School Buys Big W. 14th St. Building

    ByDon

    The New School, has picked up 34-42 West 14th St, a five-story, 180,000 square foot building, for $153 million.

    The seller was Samson Associates and the sale closed on Jan. 10, according to the Commercial Observer. Samson had owned the property since 1985. The building’s tenants will remain and pay rent to the school until their leases expire but those leases won’t be renewed. The school will take over space over time and convert it to academic uses. The building has about 25k SF of ground-floor retail space and comes with additional air rights.

    Note that price: $153 million.

  • Should University Place Be Pedestrianized?

    ByDon

    An urban planner who has been looking around for ways to make the city more pedestrian-friendly (and to open up more space for protesting) wrote “Union Square could be greatly enhanced by following through on a 2010 plan to pedestrianize Union Square West. Also pedestrianizing University Place would be a bold step that could link Union Square and Washington Square Park, merging two vital public spaces into a permanent platform for open expression.”

    That would certainly change the neighborhood.

  • Danny Meyer Invests in Joe Coffee

    ByDon

    Interesting….”Long regarded as a leader in New York’s fine-dining world, Danny Meyer is making moves into the casual ranks of the city’s culinary scene. The restaurateur’s Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG), which encompasses a range of high-price dining spots such as the Michelin-starred Gramercy Tavern and the Modern, is investing in Joe Coffee, a New York-based coffee chain with 13 locations in the city and two in Philadelphia.”

    “Historically we’ve had the privilege of investing in some incredibly special companies whose cultures, leaders, and innovative business models caught our eyes, and Joe is no different,” said Danny Meyer, Chief Executive Officer of Union Square Hospitality Group. “USHG has had a meaningful relationship with Joe Coffee and founder Jonathan Rubinstein for many years, both as avid fans of their coffee bars and also having served their coffee at Union Square Events for years. We chose to make this investment with Joe Coffee because they are dedicated to the pursuit of making flawless coffee, are led by passionate and exceptional management, and share the same hospitality values as USHG.”

    “We are incredibly proud and humbled that USHG and its affiliates have chosen to invest in Joe,” said Jonathan Rubinstein, Co-Founder and President of Joe Coffee. “Danny Meyer is a leader I have admired my entire professional career and to have the opportunity to partner with him and his outstanding team at Union Square Hospitality Group is a dream come true. With this new funding, we will continue to do what we love – roast, brew, and serve the best quality coffee with genuine hospitality – and now we are excited to bring Joe to even more great communities across the country.”