Time Out Market to Open First Manhattan Food Hall in Union Square

Time Out Market New York is setting the table in Manhattan, six years after opening its first New York City food hall in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

The food hall has signed a lease for around 10,000 square feet on the ground floor of RAL Development Services and JRE Partners’ Zero Irving building at Union Square’s 124 East 14th Street, Time Out announced last week.

“Time Out Market New York, Union Square will not just be a place to eat. It will be a platform for culinary and cultural talents — where you can discover the city’s flavors and fresh ideas, and experience New York’s creativity all at once; a place for people and the local community to come together,” Virginia Rector-Birbal, vice president for U.S. Time Out, said in a statement.

“We are particularly excited that in this new market, digital elements will be integrated to create a compelling visual experience, and to inspire and entertain our guests with Time Out content,” Rector-Birbal added.

The new food hall at the intersection of East 14th Street and Irving Place is set to open in the fall and replace food hall Urbanspace Union Square, which will leave the space by the end of this month, Crain’s New York Business reported.

The length of the lease and asking rent were unclear, but a report from CBRE found retail rents in Manhattan averaged $697 per square foot during the fourth quarter of 2024.

It’s unclear who brokered the deal. Spokespeople for Time Out, RAL and JRE Partners did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The new location comes on the heels of the success of Time Out’s Dumbo spot, which spans 24,000 square feet across two floors of the warehouse-turned-mixed-use complex at 55 Water Street. The Dumbo food hall features 21 restaurants serving up a variety of cuisines, as Commercial Observer previously reported.

Time Out’s Union Square food hall will feature seven kitchens, a bar and a stage, with communal tables and approximately 300 seats — 70 of which will be outdoor, the company said.

“Time Out Market is a high-quality tenant perfectly positioned to run a successful operation that benefits [Zero Irving’s] office tenants, the surrounding community and New York City as a whole,” Spencer Levine, president of RAL, said in a statement.

Media company Time Out, which launched in London in 1968 and opened its first market location in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2014, now has seven markets under development set to open between 2025 and 2027, in addition to 10 markets already open around the world, the company said.

But its Manhattan debut comes at a time when food halls have largely seemed to lose their appeal in New York City, especially after the massive Lower East Side food hall, Essex Crossing, closed last year after once boasting 30 vendors in 150,000 square feet at 115 Delancey Street.

While there were 367 food halls across North America and another 158 in the development pipeline as of February 2024, many are still struggling since the COVID-19 pandemic and are having trouble finding tenants, CO reported.

Grub Street called the Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s $200 million food hall a “flop” as it was reportedly losing an average of $100,000 per day. Meanwhile, the 12,000-square-foot Canal Street Market shuttered at the end of 2024, and the 40,000-square-foot Citizens Market Hall in 5 Manhattan West is set to close in April.

Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.