“Five years ago, we got our first pharmacy,” says Ellen Baer, the president of Hudson Square BID, about new happenings in the neighborhood that sits on SoHo’s western end. “That was exciting.”
If that’s excitement, then we’re not sure if Hudson Square — starting at West Houston and going south to Canal Street, and from Sixth Avenue west to Greenwich Street — will be able to handle everything the future has in store.
Two of the biggest developers in the city — Related and Extell — have set their sights on this modest area once known as the Printing District, which most New Yorkers only go through on their way to the Holland Tunnel.
Fancy boutique hotels like the 122-key Hotel Hugo are popping up (it soft-opened in April, but will have its official launch this fall) and more are on the horizon, including the 329-key Tommie, the first in a new line of micro-hotels from Commune Hotels & Resorts, which owns Thompson Hotels. Also arrived, an outpost of the hip eatery Westville (with locations in the East and West Village) and artisanal slow-food joints Dig Inn and ’Essen.
And naturally on the horizon are residential projects, like 15 Renwick, a 31-unit condo developed by IGI-USA and designed by Eran Chen, of ODA, that Core is unveiling next month. “The product is different fundamentally than anything on the market right now,” says Shaun Osher, CEO of CORE.
For one thing, 15 Renwick’s units are smaller. Where developers “brought big units into the market because there were none — now everything is big units, and the market demands smaller units,” notes Osher. And smaller units mean less crazy prices.
Which is not to say that 15 Renwick is cheap. Two-bedrooms start at $2 million (with some going as low as $1,575 per square foot) and go up to $10.5 million for a penthouse. But there is a considerable difference between Hudson Square new condo prices and those of its neighbors.