Mermaid Inn Returning to the UWS With New 7K-SF Restaurant
By Mark Hallum April 4, 2023 2:03 pm
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The Mermaid Inn is coming up for air on Columbus Avenue.
The New England-themed seafood restaurant is making an Upper West Side comeback after signing a new 6,500-square-foot lease at 335 Columbus Avenue between West 75th and West 76th streets. News of the new location was first reported in the New York Post.
After closing their 570 Amsterdam Avenue location in late 2022, where Mermaid Inn had been for 15 years, owners Danny Abrams and Cindy Smith signed a new lease with Olshan Properties for the Columbus Avenue space.
“The Mermaid Inn has been an important part of the Upper West Side dining scene for many years, and we are delighted to help them realize their new vision in an expanded space at our building located on 76th and Columbus,” Zachary Bornstein, president at Olshan, said in a statement. “They will be a welcome return to this Upper West Side neighborhood.”
The owners of the Mermaid Inn did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The length of the lease, the names of brokers and the asking rent was not immediately clear.
Average retail asking rents on Columbus between 66th and 79th streets was $249 per square foot in the fall, the last time numbers were available, according to the Real Estate Board of New York.
The relocation is a result of Mermaid Inn’s old Amsterdam Avenue building being bought out by a new partnership, which allowed the seafood restaurant to break its lease so it wouldn’t have to operate in a building undergoing facade repairs, the Post reported at the time.
There were about 90 employees working at that location at the time, but it’s unclear how much staff the new eatery would have.
The Mermaid Inn has three existing locations at 227 10th Avenue in Chelsea, 89 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village and 127 West 43rd Street in Times Square.
Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.
