One of the city’s original boutique food markets, Dean & DeLuca, will open in the Meatpacking District as it takes over space now occupied by the Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant, Spice Market, which is closing at the end of this month.
Sources tell us Dean & DeLuca will take over Spice Market’s duplex restaurant at Ninth Ave. and W. 13 Street. The building, known as both 403 E. 13 St. and 29 Ninth Ave., hosts the Soho House club upstairs and is owned by Joseph Cayre’s Midtown Equities, which among other projects, is developing the Empire Stores in Brooklyn.
A Cushman & Wakefield team represented Dean & DeLuca in the new deal.
In May, Midtown Equities’s leasing director, David Beare told the Real Deal he would be asking $700 per foot for the ground floor. An adjacent space occupied by Swedish furniture company Vitara may still be available.
The two-story $5 million Asian-inspired Spice Market created by Vongerichten, Gray Kunz and Phil Suarez became an international foodie destination. It is set in what the Post’s Steve Cuozzo calls an “Asian fantasy” filled with imported artifacts and timbers but never took off with local gourmands.
But rather than fighting over a lease option, the owners cut a deal to vacate. Open until 11 p.m., the restaurant will serve its last meal Thursday night, Sept. 29.
Founded in Soho in 1977 by Giorgio DeLuca and Joel Dean, their small shop of artisan and imported food shop at the corner of Prince and Greene streets quadrupled in size ten years later when it moved to Prince and Broadway. It now has four locations in New York along with others in the US and seven other countries. A 300-seat restaurant in Kuwait is its largest.
It was purchased for $140 million in Nov. 2014 by its franchisee, Thailand’s PACE Development Corporation, which wants to rapidly expand the brand and use it as part of the lifestyle mix in its own development projects.
Last fall a new location was announced at Donald Trump’s 40 Wall St. that will include a large restaurant as well as a food market. That space is still under construction.
None of the parties returned requests for comment.
Digital agency Beyond is expanding by one-third at its Chelsea building. The award-winning agency, which has represented Google and Viacom among others, is housed in 5,000 square feet on the 12th floor of 236 W. 27 St. between Sixth and Seventh avenues.
Beyond has renewed that lease and added 2,207 square feet on the 14th floor for a total of 7,207 square feet in the 15-story building, gaining even more inspirational views.
John D. Goodkind of Koeppel Rosen, the leasing and management agent for the Rosen family’s area portfolio, worked directly with the tenant.
The building near the Fashion Institute of Technology, which is one of its larger tenants, has an asking rent of $56 per square foot.
In the Flatiron District, MMR Research Worldwide signed a 5,909-square-foot lease at 15 W. 27th St. near Madison Square Park.
Jake Cunningham of Velocity Real Estate represented the tenant, who is moving from Midtown.
Michael Heaner, Grant Greenspan and Elliot Warren of the Kaufman Organization represented the owners, with an asking rent in the low $70s per square foot.
