From rowdy to refined: Manhattan’s West Side nightlife transformed by new developments

Major commercial and residential developments on Manhattan’s far West Side have tamed the area’s once-raucous nightlife, Crain’s reported.

The erstwhile industrial neighborhood was once known by the moniker Club Land, with more than a dozen nightclubs such as Twilo, Crobar and Mansion that brought with them high crime rates. Today, it is most associated with being home to the High Line, Google’s New York headquarters and the new home of the Whitney Museum. 

“It’s a totally different neighborhood now,” Noah Tepperberg, a co-founder of the recently-reopened Marquee club, told Crain’s.

The area’s remaining clubs are no longer catering to the boisterous crowds of years gone by, but instead to the residents and office workers who are shaping the community’s new avatar. John Meadow, an executive at club owner LDV Hospitality, told Crain’s that the company hopes to “create a unique after-work experience” with No. 8, a club that LDV is set to Open On West 16th Street near Ninth Avenue. The club—directly across from the street from Google’s offices, is a spinoff of Bungalow No. 8, which was once very popular in the area but shut three years ago.

Others, in a move to appease the residential community, are eyeing locations further east. Michael Satsky, operator of the posh Provocateur club in the Meatpacking District, told Crain’s he plans to open as many as three new spots in the West 20s between Seventh and Ninth Avenues. One likely location is the site of the former Club Shadow at 229 West 28th Street, next to the Fashion Institute of Technology campus. The college crowd, Satsky told Crain’s, was not likely to object to new night activity in the area.

“No one wants to be in a neighborhood where they’re not welcome,” he said. [Crain’s]  –Hiten Samtani