Union Square Is Building Back After Pandemic With Public Attractions

In that time, the partnership tracked foot traffic between First and Sixth avenues and 12th and 20th streets at 109 percent above January 2020 levels by using data from Placer.ai. Plus, CoStar (CSGP) data shows that 1.1 million square feet of office space was leased in 2023 and about 43 new businesses opened in the area as 78,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space has come off the market since July 2023, according to the partnership’s quarterly broker report. And 24 more stores are set to open.

All of that activity is attributable to well-curated experiences in the neighborhood, Julie Stein, executive director of the BID, told CO.

“Union Square is live as well as work. We have as many residents and students combined as we have office workers, but a really important piece of the work-play trifecta is the entertainment piece,” Stein said. “We’re seeing a lot of uses that are also sort of new in the entertainment space, so we’re seeing a lot of experiential retail pop up.”

Union Square is starting to become a comedy stronghold, with some examples being The Upright Citizens Brigade’s new location at 242 E 14th Street and The Stand NYC at 116 East 16th Street. Comedy festivals are also happening in retail spaces, drawing additional foot traffic to the area, Stein said.

The BID has been helping draw visitors with the farmers market — known as Greenmarket and run by GrowNYC — which takes place four days a week on the north and west sides of the park, and the Union Square Night Market by Urbanspace every Thursday in July and ending Aug. 1. The area sees a 13 percent increase in foot traffic during those events, according to Replica.

Another successful program was Tulip Day New York, which drew a 26 percent increase in traffic on April 7 and an 8.9 percent increase in retail spending, according to Replica.

Also driving spending in the neighborhood is a reinvigorated office market. Along with the increase in leasing, the workforce population has grown by 12 percent in the last year to an estimated 168,000 employees, according to the report. That increase has been attributed in part to more high-quality office space coming to the neighborhood.

“We saw our first [new] Class A office building open in the last couple of years with Zero Irving. This neighborhood has been historically Class B and boutique Class A, so there’s been a lot of work that’s been done to upgrade [the office supply],” Stein said. “There’s been a lot of net absorption from losses that happened over prior years. … I think we’re really in the sweet spot of feeling like our supply is meeting our demand.”

Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.