Union Square Park and its surroundings lost much of their juice of good times after the popular restaurant cafeteria in Union Square West closed in 2018 and Blue Water Grill followed him in history in 2019.
He never felt the same even with larger retailers in East 14th Street and the always popular Greenmarket still attracts crowds.
But now the park is in a retail and restaurant lease. As reported by the Union Square Association, the shop windows around the park are occupied 82%, a 68% jump in the last quarter of 2024.
The main new tenants, either in their place or the opening in the coming months, include Restaurants Seahorse, Flight Club and Smashy.
An advanced position of the popular Steakhouse Stk is reaching the corner or 200 Park Avenue South, which was dark from Elizabeth Arden Red by Spa closed in 2020.
Emerging stores are filling spaces on the ground floor, including Mets House in 1 Union Square West. The upper floors have been taken by Fred Astaire Dance Studio in 857 Broadway and the Nourish nutritional care provider in 853 Broadway.
The area has seen 28% more visits from office workers since the first quarter of 2024, according to the association.
Althegh, the organization’s report did not mention it, an important moral booster was the dismantling at the end of last year of the scaffold in Barnes & Noble in 33 E. 17th St. at the north end of the park, which had obscured the largest b & n in the city for years.
And at the front of the office, the relatively small is left behind Union Square. Cushman & Wakefield reports that its 110,000 square feet of lease in the first quarter were slightly below the average of five years.
Even so, at least 20 windows remain dark from 700 to more than 9,000 square feet, especially along Union Square East.
You are late to buy any of the Loft type condominium apartments in The Armorie, Adellco’s residential conversion of an old publication house in 114 E. 25th St. who wrote a few months ago.
A single unidentified buyer (which probably remains anonymous for a long time) snatched the 20 units and the commercial space of the ground floor for $ 71 million.
We are told that the purchase arrived only a few days after the apartments were publicly for sale, and in the midst of the turbulence of Wall Street on tariffs.
