Danny Meyer

From the May issue: Danny Meyer is the founder and CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, which operates the New York City restaurants Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Blue Smoke, Maialino and North End Grill, as well as the Whitney Museum eatery Untitled and the three restaurants in the Museum of Modern Art. The company also runs 14 outposts of the burger joint Shake Shack in Manhattan, Florida, Washington, D.C., Dubai and Kuwait City, with six more slated to open this year. Meyer also heads Union Square Events catering and Hospitality Quotient consulting. He has co-authored three books, including his business tome, “Setting the Table.” [more]

From left: Danny Meyer, Anthony Malkin and 1 World Trade Center

Operating observation decks atop large towers is so profitable that seven bidders, including two from outside the United States, submitted proposals to the Durst Organization and the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey to do so at 1 World Trade Center, according to the New York Times. [more]

From left: Shake Shack, Blue Smoke and Battery Place Market

Long chided for being too clean, too green and too removed from the city’s buzz, Battery Park City is beginning to establish itself among mature Manhattan neighborhoods. According to the New York Post, it’s starting with a restaurant boom.

Restaurateur Danny Meyer has opened three eateries in the area, including a Shake Shack at 215 Murray Street, a Blue Smoke at 255 Vesey Street and North End Grill at 104 North End Avenue. [more]

Related has purchased a portion of restaurateur Danny Meyer’s Union Square Events, Business Week reported. The pair will partner on future ventures, the first being Related’s Hudson Yards.

Meyer, of Shake Shack fame, sees it as an opportunity to extend his brand to stadiums and other properties that his products don’t currently reach, and Related gets the cachet that Meyer’s popular chains bring. [more]

A Shake Shack restaurant, Danny Meyer of Union Square Hospitality Group and the Gallery at Westbury Plaza

Danny Meyer’sUnion Square Hospitality Group is further expanding its Shake Shack empire — which already stretches as far as Kuwait City, Dubai — to Long Island, Long Island Business News reported. The beloved burger chain inked a deal for an undisclosed amount of space at the Gallery at Westbury Plaza, a 330,000-square-foot redevelopment site at 900 Old Country Road in Westbury, N.Y., according to previous reports. [more]

From the September issue: With a new Shake Shack in Grand Central, Five Guys all over Midtown and BareBurger in Park Slope and Astoria, the city’s ongoing burger boom is showing no signs of slowing down. But New York only has room for so many burger joints. So which of the many new options are winning over New Yorkers’ stomachs?

Volume-wise, the clear winner is Five Guys Burgers and Fries, which has spread like wildfire over the past few years. Founded in Virginia in 1986, Five Guys was the fastest-growing restaurant chain nationally in 2010, according to Technomic, a market research firm. It currently has nine locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and is expected to open 12 to 20 new locations in the area over the next year, according to Andrew Moger, the CEO of Branded Concept Development, a design and construction firm that has worked with Five Guys.

Known for its made-to-order hamburgers, 11 free toppings and hand-cut fries, Five Guys developed a cult following in Virginia before founder Jerry Murrell started franchising in 2002. The chain is successful, Moger said, because it sticks to what it does best — serving only burgers, hot dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches and fries — at a reasonable price point. [more]

Rendering of Grand Central Apple Store

[Updated at 4.50 p.m. with information on the store's construction] The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has quietly
released the renderings of the new Apple Store planned for Grand
Central Terminal, on the agency’s website. The images (see above and below) show what the 23,000-square-foot
property on the terminal’s east balcony could look like. The MTA’s
finance committee approved the deal for Apple to lease the property at
the end of July. Apple is taking over the space from Charlie Palmer’s
Metrazur restaurant, and will be paying significantly higher rent: $1.1 million compared to $263,997. Apple
will also be making improvements to part of the leased property at its
own cost, including the installation of an elevator.

Walking through Grand Central late on Saturday night,The Real Deal spotted that construction on the store has begun (photos are available on our Facebook page). Workmen seemed to be removing the furnishings — mostly tables and chairs — from the former Métrazur space and erecting scaffolding. The construction manager declined any further access to the site. [more]

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s deal to bring both the Apple Store and Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack to Grand Central Terminal moved one step closer to reality this afternoon when the agency’s finance committee gave the plan its official go-ahead. The Apple Store will take over the terminal’s east balcony from Charlie Palmer’s Metrazur restaurant, as well as the northeast balcony, which is currently vacant, according to the agenda from today’s meeting. The initial term of the roughly 23,000-square-foot lease will be 10 years with the option for two, five-year renewal periods. Shake Shack’s 10-year lease will be for a 2,270-square-foot space in the dining concourse. [more]

To look out the windows from the 10th floor of Larry Silverstein’s shiny new 7 World Trade Center is to take visual stock of how far Lower Manhattan has come since Sept. 11, 2001. There’s the already-skyscraping 1 World Trade Center to the right, Towers 3 and 4 rising to the left, the soon-to-open memorial plaza below, and the new W Downtown staring back from across the construction site. A few blocks to both the east and west, Lower Manhattan now houses more residents than it has ever before seen, and still more are moving in — in droves. And soon, of course, Condé Nast will arrive, and with it, as is presumed to be the case, so will the neighborhood.

So this morning, when some of the most important architects of this turnaround convened to celebrate “The New Downtown,” alongside the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate and Silverstein Properties, there was a natural, and deserved, optimism in their voices (see photos above). But there was also an unmistakable air of exasperation, as if to say, what else can we possibly do to get major retailers and restaurateurs to take notice? [more]

Restaurant titan Danny Meyer’s latest upscale creation, North End Grill, will open in Battery Park City at the end of the year, his Union Square Hospitality Group said today. The Wall Street Journal has more details on the new watering hole, a “new American eatery and bar featuring refined grill cooking with an emphasis on seafood” at North End Avenue and Murray Street. Chef Floyd Cardoz will sit at the kitchen’s helm after 12 years at Meyer’s Indian-fusion Tabla, which closed at the end of last year. [more]