Online reviews company Yelp.com opened its new Manhattan office today at 104 Fifth Avenue, between 15th and 16th streets, the same office building where Apple is located. The 9,500-square-foot space is already home to over 65 full-time employees — 20 of whom joined Yelp just this past month — and includes local and brand sales executives and a marketing team.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Yelp CEO and co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman attended the opening along with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, New York City Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne, the mayor’s Media & Entertainment Commissioner Katherine Oliver and Economic Development Corporation President Seth Pinsky. – Katherine Clarke [more]

With the recent arrival of Apple and the impending addition of Yelp in September spurring desire for the area, start-up technology firms continue to set up shop all over Union Square, the Wall Street Journal reported, despite rents in the area remaining significantly higher than in the Financial District.
Almost a dozen technology firms signed leases this year for a combined 135,000 square feet of office space in Union Square, according to the Union Square Partnership.
The average asking rent in the Financial District is currently $39 per square foot compared to $46 per square foot for Union Square, according to CBRE Research, but that doesn’t seem to matter much to the firms.
“It was such a morale drain,” Joe Essenfeld, CEO of JIBE, a service that helps match people with jobs through Facebook and Linkedin, said of working in the Financial District. [more]

Union Square residents are getting serious about fighting a new Alchemy Construction mega-tower at 31 West 15th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, according to DNAinfo. With demolition begun at the site, residents are consulting with lawyers and lobbyists and filing complaints to halt construction of the 300-foot tower, which will spoil the quiet residential stretch, add traffic and obscure views, they claim. 

“It’s just a pretty catastrophic thing to have happen to a block,” said Risa Fisher, who lives across the street.

Developer Alchemy managed to secure an agreement for air rights from neighboring Xavier High School, allowing the tower to rise to 30 stories. In return, the school will be expanding into the new building’s lower floors. [more]

A new $500,000 pedestrian mall on Broadway between 17th and 18th streets was completed today in Union Square, DNAinfo reported. The newly converted space — replete with tables, chair and umbrellas — had been a prime location for accidents, with 22 pedestrian injuries occurring there between 2004 and 2009, according to the Department of Transportation. More than 200,000 people walk through Union Square on peak summer days, including more than 4,000 NYU students, according to DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn. As part of the project, the intersection’s traffic signals were also simplified, making it safer to cross the street. The DOT also announced that the pedestrian plaza at Madison Square, which was created in 2008, will be extended one block south along Broadway. [DNAinfo]

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While many of New York City’s main retail neighborhoods have taken their hits during the recession, industry experts say that Union Square is holding strong, as big box retailers and chain eateries proliferate, even in the down economy, according to the New York Times. Jennifer Falk, executive director of the Union Square Partnership, an economic development organization, said that vacancy rates are not only low now, but have been even in the economic downturn. “We estimate that our ground-floor vacancy rate is a little less than 3 percent right now, and office space vacancy is a little less than 7 percent,” Falk said. “That’s remained steady for the last two years; we’re really amazed.” Of course, other retail neighborhoods have been performing strongly as well, according to recent reports. As The Real Deal reported, Cushman and Wakefield named Fifth Avenue retail as the priciest in the world for the ninth consecutive year, in a report that tracked high-profile shopping districts around the globe. Faith Hope Consolo, a retail broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman, said yesterday during a panel that she feels positively about U.S. retailer strength. [NYT]

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Final entries in the Sukkah City competition of ritual huts built from wooden shim, marsh grass, cardboard signs and wooden modules

As the Jewish holiday of Sukkot approaches, the city is preparing to host a Sukkah City competition, in which 600 entrants from 43 countries have been whittled down to 12 finalists whose religious devotional huts will stand in Union Square Sept. 19 and 20. The public can vote to choose the winning hut, or sukkah, which will be on display until Oct. 2, according to New York Magazine, which has a slide show of the final entries on its website. The huts have been created using all sorts of materials, including grass, wire, cardboard, hemp and wooden slats. Observant Jews erect these structures each fall during the seven-day holiday, eating and sometimes sleeping in them, in commemoration of when their ancestors wandered in the desert. The word “sukkot” refers both to the huts (plural) and the holiday, a joyous seven-day harvest festival, in which celebrants brandish a citrus fruit known as an etrog, and a bundle of palm, willow, and myrtle branches called a lulav. [NY Mag]

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The special servicer of the W New York-Union Square’s $115 million mortgage wants a bankruptcy judge to block a plan that would transfer ownership of the hotel to Host Hotels & Resorts, a publicly traded real estate investment trust. In court papers filed Monday, LNR said the mortgage debt holders it represents haven’t agreed to the plan because it would “clearly negatively impact the senior mortgage loan and run afoul of the senior mortgage loan documents,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The mortgage holder is concerned about liability releases granted under the plan and a proposed lease change. The plan also settles pending litigation involving the companies and their secured creditors. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., will consider confirming the plan at a hearing Friday. [WSJ]

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If pedestrian traffic seems denser in Union Square, there’s a reason — the glut of chain retailers and eateries — including Nordstrom Rack, Chipotle and T.G.I. Friday’s — in the neighborhood has caused a spike in the number of visitors coming to the area in recent years, according to the Villager. Foot traffic jumped 59 percent between 2003 and 2008, according to the Union Square Partnership, a business improvement group, while the the number of subway passengers coming to the area has increased 42 percent over the last decade. The recent flux of shoppers, however, has been a long time coming, according to industry insiders, who point to Whole Foods Market and Filene’s Basement as early pioneers of the Union Square retail scene. [The Villager]

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Levi’s may be moving into space 414 West 14th Street

San Francisco-based jeans retailer Levi Strauss & Co. is in talks to lease a portion of the newly-constructed 414 West 14th Street retail and office building in the Meatpacking District near the High Line, several retail sources said.

Levi’s would take less than half the 6,400 square feet of the ground-floor retail space, with about 25 feet of street frontage for a high-end store, the sources said. A lease at the building would be welcome news for the six-story office and retail building built by developer Sitt Asset Management and private equity firm the Carlyle Group. The site has been vacant since it was completed in February. The opening of the High Line in June has brought more potential shoppers to the neighborhood, but pedestrian traffic remains light during the day, some brokers said.

Levi’s has four locations in Manhattan, including in Soho at 536 Broadway near Spring Street and near Union Square at 25 West 14th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues.

A spokesperson for Levi’s said in an e-mail that the company was looking for space globally, but would not identify individual sites. [more]

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]