Restaurateurs sour on rising rents
With rents increasing in all of the prime retail areas, and longtime restaurants like Union Square Café shuttering after 30 years, restaurateurs are looking elsewhere to plant their flags. Danny Meyer, whose Union Square Café is among a long list of restaurants opened through the Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG), including Gramercy Tavern, The Modern and the Shake Shack chain, shocked the industry and patrons when he announced recently that the restaurant will forfeit its lease on East 16th Street between Broadway and Fifth Avenue, after 30 years in business. Blaming rising rents, Meyer said, “We are viewing this as an opportunity to write the next great chapter for Union Square Cafe,” the USHG said in an e-mailed statement. Meyer told the the New York Times the restaurant would reopen in the future, but “not necessarily in or near Union Square.” In a REBNY retail market report released in April, Fifth Avenue between 49th and 59th Streets had the highest average asking rent for any corridor and hit a new record of $3,550 psf, a 16 percent increase from spring 2013.
