Already established as a prime nightlife neighborhood, the Lower East Side is seeing its bar scene move further south, all the way down to the once-desolate Delancey Street.
According to Crain’s, the first signs of life along the wide thoroughfare that leads cars to the Williamsburg Bridge was Hotel Chantelle, a three-story, 10,000-square-foot bar Ravi Patel opened in a former walk-in clinic near the southeast corner of Ludlow and Delancey streets.
“It’s almost obnoxious what we paid,” Patel said of the rent. The street’s grittiness, evidenced by the unappealing retail businesses that currently mark its storefronts, keeps rent as low as $50 per square foot — compared to $80 per foot north of the street. Patel said he paid less than the $50 figure.
Lately, Ludlow Manor, opened by Georgie Seville and Luc Carl, and a spinoff of Midtown gay bar Uncle Charlie’s have joined Hotel Chantelle. “Like lemmings, everyone’s converging there,” Steven Rappaport, a senior managing director at Sinvin Real Estate, told Crain’s. [Crain’s]