New York City is full of distinct neighborhoods, many competing for charm, hipness, quality of life and a good work-life balance. As a newcomer, and one that many city dwellers still haven’t heard of, Hudson Square is trying to create an identity separate from its culturally vibrant neighbors — SoHo to the east, the West Village to the north, TriBeCa to the south — that have long had curb appeal for businesses and new residents alike.
Bordered by some of the city’s most valued public spaces to the west, the Hudson River and Hudson River Park, the neighborhood was once a gritty, industrial area that had been the epicenter of the printing industry in the early 1900s. Its past means that Hudson Square is architecturally different from many other parts of Manhattan, which are brimming with gleaming skyscrapers. Instead, it is dotted with scores of so-called groundscrapers — large, horizontal buildings with relatively few stories, many spanning entire blocks — that were once used for printing press manufacturing.
Hudson Square was once home to the headquarters of Bowne & Company, a letterpress firm and the oldest company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and Freedom’s Journal, the first African American-owned and -operated U.S. newspaper, which began printing in the neighborhood in 1827.
That industrial history, along with the traffic and busyness from the nearby Holland Tunnel and railway terminals, meant the neighborhood wasn’t considered a pleasant place to live, despite its proximity to public transit, something immensely important to New Yorkers.
But now developers and real estate companies are trying to lure residents with a plan that includes creating more green spaces and making the area more pedestrian-friendly. And its transformation has persuaded two American companies — Google and Disney — to make the neighborhood the home of their New York headquarters.
“Hudson Square has a lot of capacity to absorb new space and convert old space,” said Mitchell L. Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University. For example, he added, “there are so many underused parking lots still there.”
Mr. Moss said the neighborhood’s history combined with newly installed outdoor and recreational spaces gave it an edge over competing office markets like Hudson Yards, which he described as “a homogeneous collection of sterile glass buildings.”
A plan to reshape the neighborhood was released by the local business improvement district shortly before a 2013 rezoning effort established the Hudson Square district. Rezoning denotes how land can be used in an area. In this case, Hudson Square could now go from an industrial neighborhood to a mixed-use district that included affordable housing, retail space and office buildings.
The rezoning and planning effort was led by Trinity Church Wall Street, whose history in the area dates to 1705 when Queen Anne gave the house of worship a land grant that included 14 acres in what is now Hudson Square.
In 2016, the church formed a joint-venture partnership, Hudson Square Properties, with Norges Bank Investment Management and later selected Hines, a global real estate company, as their operating partner to invest in changes in the neighborhood, such as installing modern heating, cooling and ventilation systems and promoting energy-efficient buildings.
The group now has a portfolio that includes 13 buildings, making up about 40 percent of the neighborhood’s office space.
Hudson Square’s structures have large, open floors that make them adaptable for supporting growing work forces, and their high ceilings and abundant windows create natural lighting that can accommodate different kinds of activities.
That makes them ideal for the amount of space companies may need in the next decade or so, according to Hines, which says it is betting that businesses will require up to 600,000 square feet to support their growing work forces and the addition of amenities like outdoor spaces and areas for food services. During the pandemic, when companies pulled back on office leasing, the average space was 81,000 to 90,000 square feet, according to Hines.
The rezoning, which included about 10 million square feet of nonresidential space, allowed for roughly 3,300 new housing units. At the entrance of the Holland Tunnel, two vacant parking lots have been transformed into recreational spaces called Freeman Plaza East and West. The redevelopment of Hudson Street widened sidewalks, created a protective bike lane and added about 170 chairs in recreational areas and along sidewalks. Over 530 trees have been planted.
Much of those changes were spurred by the business improvement district’s priority of creating safe, accessible pedestrian spaces, said Samara Karasyk, president and chief executive of the Hudson Square Business Improvement District. “There is a basic formula for what goes into that — wider sidewalks, benches, trees, plants and welcoming street art.”
For businesses, Hudson Square’s existing structures are flexible for their growing needs, and the neighborhood offers the opportunity to build new ones — especially at the kind of scale that Google and Disney required.
Disney’s new building, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is expected to open this year. It will be 22 stories tall and span a city block. Google’s new headquarters are an adaptive reuse of St. John’s Terminal, the end point for trains that had traveled on what is now the High Line. The structure has kept the exposed rail lines on which freight trains once traveled.
With three acres of open space, multiple terraces and a total of 12 stories amounting to 1.3 million square feet overlooking the Hudson River, the building satisfied Google’s needs. Those included integrating nature into the architecture and creating a malleable office space for its expanding work force. Achieving that at such a scale in Manhattan, where buildings are tightly packed on a grid with little room for horizontal expansion, is nearly impossible.
After buying the building in 2022 from Oxford Properties for $2.1 billion, Google invested in natural ecosystems and connected parts of Hudson Square that had been inaccessible. For example, Hudson River Park, which runs four miles along Manhattan’s West Side, is a key asset to the neighborhood. But St. John’s Terminal spans two blocks, limiting access to the park. To remedy this, new pathways, including an alley with a highway crosswalk, were built to reach the park on either side of the building.
Outdoor spaces surrounding the structure include 1.5 acres of vegetation on rooftop terraces and at street level, many of which are open to the public. Ninety-five percent of the plants are native to New York State.
Such outdoor spaces are not only an enhancement to the neighborhood. For some, they can also reduce stress and “offer positive psychological, physiological and behavioral outcomes,” said Amanda Carroll, a managing director at Gensler New York, who was the interior architect on both Google’s and Disney’s offices.
Ms. Carroll said Disney’s headquarters would also include terraces, along with wellness rooms, event spaces, a 290-seat screening room, a library and a bike-storage room with shower facilities.
Residents have mostly embraced the influence of anchor tenants like Google and Disney on the neighborhood.
“I’m happy they’re here,” said Martin Sheridan, president of the Ear Inn, which was established in 1817 and is one of the oldest bars in the city. “The development funds have been very helpful to many of the old businesses.”
Mr. Sheridan noted that the new clientele skewed much younger than he was used to. “They’re in their 20s, and there’s a lot of them,” he said.
The neighborhood is more vibrant than it was 15 years ago, said Richard Blodgett, who has lived in Hudson Square for 56 years and is the president of the Charlton Street Block Association. He also said that he had heard some concerns from local residents that the presence of Google was causing an increase in street and subway traffic, but that he wasn’t worried.
Yet others are concerned that the companies will make the neighborhood and those surrounding it even more expensive.
“When you have two of the largest corporations in the world come in, their impact trickles down into other places,” said Gabriel Skoletsky, a lawyer and West Village native, who listed higher property taxes as well as increased grocery, maintenance and rent costs as potential changes that residents may soon face as Hudson Square’s popularity grows.
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