BID Drawing More Interest in 34th Street

​December 3, 2009

Real Estate Weekly

The 34th Street Partnership has been on a mission to encourage more restaurateurs to move in and take advantage of the neighborhood's huge pedestrian traffic and even bigger appetite. Residential, retail and office buildings are rising on the blocks between Park and Tenth Avenues and 31st to 36th Street. New hotels are in the planning and construction stages while existing ones are being renovated and more tourists than ever before flock to shop at Macy's and the other big name retailers represented there.

The 34th Street Partnership's efforts are being rewarded with new leases, recent openings and projected restaurant projects. Legends New York City recently opened at 6 West 33rd Street on the increasingly busy strip facing the towering Empire State Building. Replacing Tupelo Grill at One Penn Plaza, the owners of a fashionable menswear boutique in NoLita have partnered with the owners of the Lenny's sandwich chain to open a hip new Italian restaurant called Lugo Caffe. The address at 1 Penn Plaza on West 33rd Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, is bringing in executives from the surrounding office buildings for morning cappuccino, lunch, after-work cocktails and dinner.

The highly-successful, New York-based chain Bistro New York International Inc. has leased 6,450 s/f on the ground floor of the Olivia building. The new cafe is named Bistro 17 from the address of the Olivia Building at 17 Penn Plaza and completes the jigsaw that comprises over 600,000 s/f of residential, retail and commercial space in this sleek, handsome 33-story property that runs through the entire block from West 34th to West 33rd Streets. The huge crowds of sports fans and concert-goers attending Madison Square Garden and the thousands of commuters passing through Penn Station will soon have yet another local-area lunch, dinner and drinks option. The office building housing this new restaurant is owned by Brause Realty Inc, and is next to the high-volume corner location of the Brother Jimmy's BBQ chain.

And the Radisson Martinique Hotel, a Beaux-Arts, landmark-status edifice facing Greeley Square, Broadway and Sixth Avenue will be the location of a 17,000 s/f fine dining and entertainment center that will be the talk of the town when restaurateur Stavros Aktipis gets through. He will transform the 6,000 s/f lower level of the hotel into a multi-suite, special event venue and jazz club.