By Kim Velsey 3/20 6:23pm

In the Rezone

Hudson Square

It’s Official! Hudson Square Has Been Rezoned

This afternoon, the City Council voted to approve the Hudson Square rezoning. The rezoning—a plan five years in the making that allows for the creation of a denser, mixed-use district with significantly more residential and retail development—is now in effect. Bordered by Tribeca and Soho, there’s little doubt what the rezoning will mean for Hudson Square’s future. Behold New York’s next hot neighborhood.

Full Council approval was largely a formality after the Council’s land use and zoning and franchise committees voted to approve the plan last week, but it was significant: the last step in a lengthy approval process that will transform a neighborhood currently characterized by old printing plants and quiet sidewalks. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/27/12 1:32pm

In the Rezone

Towers will be slightly smaller than initially proposed following an agreement between the borough president and Trinity. (Trinity Real Estate)

Hudson Square Hallelujah: Scott Stringer Approves Trinity Rezoning with Shorter Towers, More Open Space

The new towers in Hudson Square are going to look more, well, square.

That is after Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer wrangled a deal with Trinity Church to reduce the size of new towers as part of a rezoning the rectors are undertaking in the formerly industrial neighborhood just north of the Holland Tunnel. This was among the concessions extracted by Mr. Stringer before giving the project his conditional approval, which he signed yesterday as part of the rezoning’s public review process.

The buildings will be a bit wider, though, so as not to lose their density, but they can only rise to 290 feet, rather than 320 feet. Stocky towers instead of slender spires, basically. But that is in many ways fitting with the areas already stolid building stock of former printing plants, which typified the neighborhood for a century before it became a popular haven for Soho expats and minor celebrities (hello James Gandolfini and Lou Reed!).  Read More

By Matt Chaban 9/10/12 11:43am

In the Rezone

Hudson_Square_Small

Even a Smaller Hudson Square Will Transform the Manhattan Skyline

We know that the reason there are no skyscrapers in the middle of Manhattan has nothing to do with bedrock and everything to do with development patterns. And it is development that will alter that skyline once again. Trinity Real Estate recently unveiled their plans to rezone Hudson Square, the last undeveloped corner of Manhattan just west of Soho, north of Tribeca, south of the Village. As those neighborhoods would suggest, it is a place ripe for development. Just beware of over-development. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/22/12 9:30am

Best Laid Plans

Lofty goals. (Trinity Real Estate)

Circling Hudson Square: Everybody Wants a Piece of the Last Untouched Neighborhood—Except for Those Who Just Want To Be Left Alone

Last Friday night on far west Spring Street, the Ear Inn was crowded as usual. A mix of neighborhood regulars and happy-hour-indulging co-workers from the nearby loft buildings—architects, ad execs, programmers, writers—were crammed around the mahogany bar imbibing. Others were gathered outside around benches on the uncrowned sidewalk two blocks from the West Side Highway.

The bar has been there for 195 years, but forget asking for some sort of mixological cocktail that could be found at hundreds of establishments citywide pretending at this sort of authenticity. Above the bar, beyond the shelves of dusty liquor bottles, are glass carboys, ruddy green and brown glass, the size of harbor buoys. They held wine more than a century ago and disappeared into the bowels of the basement, only to be excavated in the 1970s when the bar was made over by a band of eccentric artists. One of their rank tended bar until five years ago. He has since moved upstate. Things change, then they don’t.

“We’ve gotten the holy trinity of Pret a Manger, Starbucks and Hale & Hearty soups, but otherwise the neighborhood looks the way you imagine it did 100 years ago,” said James Parvin, a segment producer at NBC who lives in a loft he converted himself on nearby Charlton Street. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/20/12 6:12pm

Best Laid Plans

5 Photos

Hudson Squared Off

Hudson Square Hallejujah: City Planning Certifies Trinity’s Transformation of Sleepy Neighborhood

Time to pray to the zoning gods. As expected, Trinity Real Estate brought its big plans to the City Planning Commission today—it is the largest private rezoning ever undertaken. The plan to bring residential development to the quiet blocks just west of Soho was met with quiet approval from the commission, though a few members of the zoning board expressed concern over whether or not a private applicant, and not the city, should be undertaking such a project. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/16/12 8:20pm

Best Laid Plans

The neighborhood New York forgot. (Hudson Square Connection)

Hudson Square Rising: Last Corner of Undeveloped Manhattan Starts Rezoning Process Monday

Trinity Church has controlled vast swaths of Lower Manhattan real estate for more than three centuries, since the Queen of England deeded 215-acres to the church in 1705. Much of that property has been given away or sold off, but the church still controls one pocket of land at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, known affectionately these days thanks to developers and brokers, as Hudson Square.

Over the years, the neighborhood has been remade repeatedly, from farmland to factories to the heart of the city’s printing district. More recently, it has become a hub of media and tech firms—Saatchi and Saatchi, New York magazine, MTV, the New York Genome Center—but the church wants to take things a step further and create a 24/7 live-work neighborhood, like neighboring Soho and Tribeca.

For the past five years, Trinity has been working on a rezoning of 50 acres spread over some 20 off-the-grid blocks—the area often feels remote cut off from the rest of the city as it is by the Holland Tunnel. On Monday, it officially begins the public review process, as the City Planning Commission is expected to certify Trinity’s in-hourse rezoning proposal. Read More

2/21/12 9:00am

lease beat

350 Hudson Street. (Courtesy Property Shark)

Frenkel & Co. Renews in Hudson Square

An insurance company has renewed its lease in the increasingly media- and startup-friendly enclave of Hudson Square.

Frenkel & Co., an independent insurance company, has signed a seven-year lease renewal for 39,000 square feet on the fourth floor of 350 Hudson Street for its corporate headquarters, The Commercial Observer has learned. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 12/07/11 3:00pm

ICSC

The Flatiron District, one of many suggested "hot" "new" neighborhoods.

Q: The City's Next Hot Neighborhood? A: Take Your Pick

To seasoned retail brokers, the very concept of the next big neighborhood in a city that has been developed several times over is, well, naïve. Still, as The Commercial Observer recently learned, most are still looking for a reason to believe. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 11/30/11 10:02am

The Lease Beat

137Varick (2)

Trinity’s 137 Varick Street Reaches 100%

A Trinity Real Estate-owned Hudson Square office building has reached 100 percent occupancy after it lured NYU-Poly Varick Street Incubator away from another Trinity-owned building into a bigger space, signed Paik Architecture PLLC to new office space, and agreed to give current tenant Unity Construction Development additional space, The Commercial Observer has learned.

Having met maximum capacity, 137 Varick Street now has an eclectic collection of tenants that range from Alexander Gorlin Architects, online job search company TheLadders, and Scott Jordan Furniture.

Read More