The grand opening of The Shops & Restaurants at Hudson Yards, the largest project in US retail property in recent years, took place in New York.
Hudson Yards Shopping Center is located in the same-named multifunctional complex in the west of Manhattan and covers an area of 12 hectares. Its open spaces and park will occupy about 4 hectares. The total area of the complex is more than 1 million square feet (about 93,000 square meters).
The developers of the project, Related Companies, and Oxford Properties Group, invested $ 25 billion in Hudson Yards. The funds were invested in the creation of a huge complex above the railway lines running from the Penn Station. In the future, the construction of the second phase of Hudson Yards West is planned, in which mainly residential apartments will be located.
The Shops & Restaurants at Hudson Yards shopping mall is called “vertical shopping space.” Seven trading levels are located between office high-rise towers: north and south. The complex includes six high-rise buildings up to 300 meters high, including offices, Equinox hotel, residential and non-residential apartments. Room rates at the Equinox Hotel start at $ 700 per night.
Other original buildings of the Hudson Yards complex are The Shed, arts center worth $ 500 million, and The Vessel – is a fifty-meter-high structure, with original staircases of 2500 steps and a viewing platform.
It is already called the newest, most brilliant and large construction worth several billion dollars – an expression of what everyone is accustomed to perceive as a “mall”. At the time of opening, The Shops & Restaurants shopping center was leased by 90 percent. The complex will open 100 stores and 25 restaurant concepts, from fast-food cafes to high-end restaurants. Three floors are occupied by Neiman Marcus flagship store with an area of about 18,000 sq. m. Stores of Coach, Uniqlo, Athleta, Banana Republic, and Lululemon are already open. Brooks Brothers, Dior, and Tiffany & Co. are expected to open soon. Popular mass-market brands H&M, Zara and Sephora are also present in Hudson Yards.
The second level of the shopping center was called “The Floor of Innovation”: here are the pop-up stores of fashionable online retailers. Digital brands try the viability of their concept in traditional retail. Among them are b8ta project, M.Gemi shoe showroom, Mack Weldon menswear, and Batch home decor store. Near this level located Instagram-gallery Snark Park and the playground for visitors 3den.
New York is one of the most difficult cities in the world for retailers, so the project creators have provided special services to attract visitors. To lure residents and tourists from Fifth Avenue and Madison is not an easy task. For this, Hudson Yards offers online stylist advice, shopping, concierge services and much more for quality shopping in the 21st century. It is expected that when all tenants open in the mall, project attendance will reach 60 thousand people a day.
The scale, innovations, spectacular atriums and decorations of the shopping center, made by fashionable local artists – all this together makes the project “The Shops & Restaurants at Hudson Yards” a landmark for American retail. What is this – a new mall, which will fight for its survival, or “New Retail”, which is worth being equal to? The Future Will Tell.
