Soaring Rents Force Famed Union Square Restaurants To Close: Report

UNION SQUARE, NY — Two longtime Union Square restaurants are leaving the neighborhood thanks to soaring rents, according to Bloomberg.

Managers with Blue Water Grill and Republic, both restaurants that have operated on Union Square West for more than 20 years, told Bloomberg they would close.

Blue Water Grill, the popular seafood restaurant that seats 225 diners, first opened at 31 Union Square West in 1996. Last year, the restaurant debuted a renovated restaurant, complete with a new cocktail and oyster bar. Now, the seafood staple says it has to relocate because of a rent of more than $2 million-a-year.

Blue Water Grill's parent company, Landry's, confirmed in an email to Patch that the restaurant would seek a new location.

"The rent at this location was just recently raised to well over $2 million," a spokeswoman said in a statement. "Even though this is one of New York's most successful restaurants, it can't be successful with a $2 million plus rent; therefore, we will be relocating within the next year. In the meantime, it is business as usual."

Patch was not immediately able to contact the building's landlord for comment.

Republic, located just steps away from Blue Water Grill, will also close by the end of the year. Republic's co-owner Jonathan Morr told Bloomberg that he wasn't sure whether he would reopen elsewhere. The restaurant first opened in 1995.

"Listen, if the rents weren’t that crazy, we could have stayed there forever," Morr told Bloomberg. "Maybe we should all just become landlords instead."

Patch was not immediately able to contact Morr or any other representatives of Republic for additional details.

Once Blue Water Grill and Republic leave the neighborhood, a trio of popular restaurants will have fled thanks to increasing rents. Blue Water and Republic previously sandwiched the Heartland Brewery, which closed its doors at the end of 2014.

Bloomberg probed the increasing number of restaurants that have left Union Square in search of more affordable rents. Prolific NYC restauranteur Danny Meyer moved his famous Union Square Cafe, the first restaurant in his empire, to a location several blocks to the north of Union Square this year after closing its eponymous address in 2015.

At the time, Meyer said that rents around Union Square had become too expensive for restaurants like the Union Square Cafe to remain viable.

"Because the market suggests they can, landlords are using this moment to demand the significantly higher rents they’ve been waiting for since first betting on their neighborhoods," Meyer wrote in a 2014 editorial. "In our case, the advertised rent is triple what we are now paying."

Soaring rents have pushed numerous independently owned restaurants and businesses from the neighborhoods they once called home. Activists in the East Village are currently pushing for a measure that would provide more support for local business owners as chain stores increasingly move into the neighborhood.

Lead image via Eden, Janine and Jim/Flickr