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EDC to redevelop P.C. Richard store in Union Square
City pitches site as potential post-startup office hub
The city is looking to the tech-startup-fueled future, seeking to replace a Union Square electronics store with offices for emerging companies.
New York’s Economic Development Corporation will call for proposals to redevelop 124 East 14th Street, a city-owned site currently home to a P.C. Richard & Son store.
The city’s guidelines encourage developers to build office space at Union Square location, targeting startups that outgrow incubators and coworking spaces such as those managed by WeWork.
“The current site of the P.C. Richard store will serve as a new tech hub in Union Square, capitalizing on the academic and transit advantages offered by the neighborhood and its proximity to the Flatiron district,” Maria Torres-Springer, president of the EDC, told Crain’s in a statement. “This is just one example of how we are finding creative uses for the assets we have in a city where space is harder and harder to come by.”
The store has operated at the site for 19 years, Crain’s reported.
The Midtown South office market has been red hot recently, with availability hitting 7.9 percent, its lowest level since 2001, in the third quarter of this year.
The guidelines also allow for the possibility of residential space on the site. Current zoning there allocates 140,000 square feet of space to residential and only about 93,000 square feet to commercial use.
Bids to redevelop the property must be in by February, a spokesperson for the EDC told Crain’s. That’s the same month P.C. Richard’s lease will expire. [Crain’s] – Ariel Stulberg