You can take the Union Square out of Union Square Café, but you can’t take the Union Square Hospitality Group out of Union Square.
Danny Meyer is moving his restaurant empire’s corporate office from its longtime home on the east side of Union Square Park. But the new digs will still overlook the namesake square and the farmers market that gave rise to the celebrity restaurateur’s farm-to-table concept more than 30 years ago.
Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group signed a lease for 15,000 square feet at the Feil Organization’s 853 Broadway, sources told The Real Deal.
Meyer and Co. will be the only multi-floor tenant in the building, occupying the full 17th and 18th floors that are connected by a staircase in the 21-story building at the corner of Broadway and East 14th Street.
A representative for the Feil Organization declined to comment, and a spokesperson for Union Square Hospitality could not be immediately reached. Michael Mathias at Savills Studley represented the tenant, and also declined to comment.
The space at 853 Broadway had previously been leased to the public relations firm HL Group which signed a lease in 2016 to relocate to RFR Realty’s 350 Madison Avenue. The new digs are just a short walk from the current offices at 24 Union Square East, where the group’s lease expires in 2019.
The Feil family has owned the 21-story, 135,000-square-foot 853 Broadway since the late 1960s, and completed a $15 million renovation to the building in 2015 that included a new glass façade covering the retail spaces leased to Capital One Bank and MAC Cosmetics.
Office tenants in the building include 21st Century Fox’s online-advertising company TrueX Media, Brack Capital Real Estate and analytics-software company Media iQ Digital.
The Union Square Hospitality Group is the parent company of popular restaurants like the Union Square Café, Gramercy Tavern and the Blue Smoke & Jazz Tavern. Meyer and his company also founded the Shake Shack chain (which went public in 2015) and the three-Michelin-starred Eleven Madison, which he sold to chef Daniel Humm and general manager Will Guidara in 2011.
And while the group’s offices are staying on Union Square Park, the same can’t be said for the restaurant that started it all back in 1985.
The Union Square Café back in 2015 served its last meal in its longtime home at 21 East 16th Street and relocated several blocks north and east to 101 East 19th Street at the corner of Park Avenue South. The pioneering restaurant was replaced by the Japanese chain TsuruTonTan Udon Noodle Brasserie.
Meyer last year partnered with Fosun Group to open a $30 million restaurant and event space at the top of 28 Liberty Street in Lower Manhattan.