Lincoln Square, the neighborhood surrounding the city’s most prominent performing arts hub, tops many lists when observers look for success stories of large-scale urban renewal.
The shops, restaurants, television studios, movie theaters, and eight residential properties erected in the last three years all take their energy and vitality from Lincoln Center. That vindicates the city planners who 50 years ago conceived the largest performing arts institution in the world.
Now, a $325 million redevelopment project is reshaping Lincoln Center to help better integrate it into the surrounding community. Add the new Time Warner building and its more than 40 high-end shops at the southern tip of the neighborhood, and it’s easy to see which direction area retail is headed.
“The per square footage rate is going to increase, which is going to make it hard for your neighborhood dry cleaner or liquor store,” said Michael Goldenberg, executive director of sales for Halstead’s West Side office. “You could soon see a Bendel’s, a Tiffany’s or a Sherry-Lehmann [wine shop] in Lincoln Square.”
That day has yet to arrive, however, and for now residential buildings will continue to balance their projects on the backs of large national chain stores, as is the trend throughout most of the Upper West Side, Goldenberg added.
A 53,000 square foot Bed Bath & Beyond store is set to open shortly on the ground floor of the Grand Tier, a 232-unit rental building developed by Glenwood Management on the corner of 65th and Broadway.
Around the corner on 63rd Street, an additional 25,000 square feet of retail space will open in the old Empire Hotel, which is being converted into 125 luxury condominiums.
And at 43 West 64th Street, the newly remodeled O’Neal’s Restaurant is opening on the ground floor of a recently converted luxury condo building developed by the Athena Group.
In contrast, over at Trump Place along the West Side Highway running from 59th to 72nd Streets – which is technically inside the Lincoln Square neighborhood – developers are trying to maintain a less intrusive retail environment.
“We’re striving for smaller, exclusive service retail for the residents so that we don’t have unnecessary deliveries and clatter and trash that comes along with larger scale retail,” said Paul Davis, the chief executive officer of Hudson Waterfront Associates, the developer working with Donald Trump.
Of the two condos and three rentals now on the market, the condos have sold out, as have 92 percent of the rental units, which average $50 a square foot. The development’s most expensive condo, at 72nd Street, is nearing completion (with 83 percent pre-sold) and another three buildings will rise over the next two years. Davis is forecasting another seven to eight years of construction, by which time there will be 17 waterfront buildings, 5,700 apartment units, 137,800 feet of retail space and a 21.5-acre park.
The speed with which the Trump buildings sold out speaks to the cachet of the neighborhood but is also a product of favorable interest rates and improved amenities, such as the newly remodeled 72nd Street subway station, said Goldenberg.
But at the heart of the growth is still the overarching influence of the Lincoln Center campus, which generates over $1 billion for the city’s economy, said Monica Blum, president of the Lincoln Square Business Improvement District.
Restaurants in the area typically draw in diners before a long night at Avery Fisher Hall, and Blum said she doesn’t think that will change with the opening of the Time Warner Center. Not everyone may feel like removing themselves to those high-end restaurants, which for many are more a part of Midtown than they are Lincoln Square, she said.
Long-established stalwarts like Cafe Fiorello, Shun Lee West and O’Neal’s are revamping, but high rents may deter any new restaurants opening along Broadway.
Chase Welles, a retail broker with Northwest Atlantic Real Estate who has done several local restaurant deals, said he expects the dining district to expand both north and south towards 72nd and 57th Streets.
“My opinion is side streets will run between $80 and $85 a square foot, and space in general between $60 and $175,” he said. “I don’t think rents will necessarily go higher because of the influence of Time Warner.”
Resident Ann Cutbill Lenane, an executive vice president at Douglas Elliman, said Lincoln Square is a wonderful neighborhood in which to raise a family, given its close proximity to excellent schools, the park, a YMCA on 65th Street and of course, the cultural offerings of Lincoln Center. Lenane also applauded the retail offerings, such as the Bed Bath & Beyond store.
Still, other residents said they feared success would spoil the area. Many worry that the essential character of Lincoln Square as an arts hub will be obscured when it’s overrun by shoppers and excessive traffic drawn to entertainment, restaurants, cafes and movie theatres.
It’s the arcaded setbacks and extra wide sidewalks, along with the open feeling of the bow-tie intersections in the area that create a sense of intimacy, said Kate Wood, executive director of Landmark West, a 20-year-old organization that’s been working to preserve the architectural heritage of the Upper West Side. She said that may be lost with the construction of the 29-story Grand Tier building at 1926 Broadway.
Community Board 8 successfully restricted a planned 150-car public garage in the Grand Tier, but while zoning calls for wider sidewalks and arcades in the area, the building predated the zoning and so the sidewalks aren’t required to be as wide.
“Each individual development is taking more than it’s giving back,” lamented Wood.
