Tony Greenberg, founder of Up Ventures

While some New York City real estate developers look to another neighborhood for inspiration, Tony Greenberg, founder of the just-launched Up Ventures, looked halfway around the world.

Up Ventures, a real estate development group specializing in innovative restaurant space, aims to bring Tokyo- and Hong Kong-style restaurant real estate to New York City.

“Here in New York, you see restaurants on the basement floor, the ground floor [or] the rooftop [in different buildings],” Greenberg said. But overseas, Greenberg said that restaurateurs establish eateries on upper-level floors of the same building. Rather than browse blocks for restaurants, patrons could look upstairs or downstairs at the offerings in a single building.

Greenberg, who had been vice president of finance at Hudson Yards Development Corporation before leaving the post in the late spring, said that the concept clicked for him during his travels and he began to explore ways in which he could apply the relatively unheard of strategy in New York. [more]