Few New York public areas have seen such monumental turn-arounds fairly like Bryant Park. What was as soon as a Midtown Manhattan wasteland given over to derelicts and drug addicts has grow to be one of many metropolis’s most fascinating industrial and leisure locations. Within the early aughts, bi-annual style weeks helped lure the cultural crowd — and newer arrivals like an annual summer time movie sequence and winter reward market now maintain them there. After which there are bakeries — plenty of them — greater than half-a-dozen which have popped up in and round Bryant Park, most notably alongside a stretch of West fortieth Road between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
The success of those companies displays each the bigger reinvention of Bryant Park and the industrial and retail evolution of Manhattan itself. “West fortieth Road has turned a bakery product area of interest the way in which there are different [centralised retail] niches in New York,” stated Dan Pisark, vice chairman for retail and facilities at Bryant Park Company (BPC).
Groupings of companies promoting comparable merchandise to comparable prospects could appear counterintuitive from a revenue perspective, however they’re truly a tried-and-true retail technique, stated Tyler Winograd, retail and client experiences studio director at structure and design big Gensler. But whereas neither industrial clusters nor bakeries are distinctive to Bryant Park, the idea “type of hits you [here] within the face,” Winograd stated.
That “hit” stems from a roster of each longstanding and newer-to-the-neighborhood bakeries that masks Midtown’s typically city panorama. West fortieth’s six key pastry outlets embody Heritage Grand Bakery, Girl M Cake Boutique, Blue Bottle Espresso, Le Ache Quotidien, Danish bakery Ole and Steen and French patisserie Angelina Paris. There’s additionally Breads Bakery and Wafels and Dinges inside Bryant Park; the Starbucks across the nook on Sixth Avenue; and the 5 bakery-oriented kiosks within the park’s annual Winter Village.
Whereas the focus of those companies might seem random, “in the event that they’re clustering there, it’s as a result of there’s a necessity,” stated Matthew Chmielecki, senior vice chairman at industrial actual property agency CBRE. Meals is an trade that favors vital mass, Chmielecki explains, with every particular person enterprise benefiting from like-minded neighbors and prospects.
A pre-existing bakery, as an illustration, demonstrates a viable client base, suggesting fewer dangers for space newcomers. Why not “create an much more costly market, if you’ll, with the identical choices or comparable choices the place the individuals are?” stated Winograd. “It begins to really feel just like the type of rising tide lifts all boats phenomenon.”
Components, each intentional and circumstantial, clarify West fortieth’s dramatic bakery ecosystem. There’s Bryant Park’s prime Midtown location, with its regular move of businesspeople and vacationers — roughly 12 million annual guests, per BPC. Constant foot site visitors, in flip, has inspired bakeries to embrace their neighbors as alternative, slightly than competitors, and meet buyer calls for, which have shifted — however didn’t essentially wane — because the pandemic.
“fortieth Road has type of taken its orders from Bryant Park,” defined Dan Biederman, BPC’s govt director. “There have been many vacancies on fortieth Road 10 years in the past, 15 years in the past.” Because the park developed, these vacancies created a possibility for brand spanking new retail and subsequently, a brand new id for the once-neglected inexperienced house.
In 1992, the BPC launched into a complete plan for Bryant Park, a 10-acre patch lengthy referred to as “Needle Park” as a consequence of a repute for top crime and drug site visitors. In line with BPC historical past, the nonprofit’s seven-year grasp plan included some $10 million towards grounds upkeep, public-serving programming and different “way of life” endeavors that helped scale back crime by 92%. Lengthy gone are sellers and vagrants, changed by of us attending these park summer time film nights or winter ice skating periods.
Such varied-yet-consistent sources of foot site visitors are a lot of what attracted Anthony Battaglia, CEO of Angelina Paris, to 1050 Sixth Ave. on the nook with West fortieth Road. Previous to the pandemic, roughly 10,000 folks handed by the spot every week, stated Battaglia, a dependable buyer base that gave him the arrogance to open Angelina in November of 2020, regardless of the uncertainty of the COVID disaster.
“We have now a robust story to promote, and we didn’t discover, again then, one thing much like our [French patisserie] idea,” stated Battaglia, who beforehand labored at posh French chain Maison Kayser, which shuttered its West fortieth Road location in the course of the pandemic. Along with his background in meals service, Battaglia knew that Angelina might differentiate itself from opponents in addition to complement high-end neighboring retailers, similar to Complete Meals.
There was additionally West fortieth’s comparatively optimum hire costs. Though exact numbers for West fortieth Road’s “bakery row” are troublesome to pinpoint, a 2025 CBRE first quarter report famous common asking rents on Fifth Avenue between forty ninth and forty second Road hovered round $615 per sq. foot, in comparison with practically $700 per sq. foot alongside Manhattan’s important retail corridors.
Value concerns had been a part of the explanation Lou Ramirez, a managing accomplice at Heritage Grand Bakery, branched out on his personal after working for years at Bryant Park-area bakeries like Maison Kayser and Le Ache Quotidien. Though Maison Kayser later folded its West fortieth Road location, Ramirez’s Heritage Grand finally leased that very same house — which is sensible. Places which have beforehand held bakeries come ready-made with the best bodily layouts — industrial kitchens, ample show instances, regulated air flow techniques — wanted by comparable tenants.
For this reason so many bakeries can crop up so shortly in and round Bryant Park: The services are already in place, stated Winograd.
“Companies are all the time searching for any method that it may be favorable to . . . reducing their barrier to entry,” Winograd added. “One of many large methods they do that’s search for areas that had been beforehand aligned with their enterprise.”
In contrast to Heritage Grand, Angelina moved into what was, on the time, a brand new constructing and needed to construct out every thing from scratch — a course of that proved time-intensive and dear. Angelina’s landlord, Backyard Houses (by way of its New York affiliate Skyline Builders), wasn’t essentially searching for a bakery tenant, stated Battaglia. However constructing house owners like what bakeries have to supply.
On the naked minimal, a bakery smells good, stated Biederman. However extra importantly, they incentivize workers to buy and dine proper the place they work — which helps lure profitable workplace tenants above, explains Jonathan Resnick, president of Heritage’s landlord Jack Resnick and Sons. On the landlord’s request, Heritage Grand supplied the constructing’s upstairs tenants a ten% low cost on its merchandise to assist maintain them from ever leaving.
Floor-floor facilities have grow to be more and more useful in a post-pandemic world to entice employees again to their workplaces in conventional central enterprise districts like Bryant Park. However the neighborhood’s character is altering, Battaglia says. Regardless of anchor towers by the likes of Salesforce and Financial institution of America, corporations similar to international banking big HSBC have moved to newer enterprise districts, like Hudson Yards. In the meantime, workers at remaining neighboring workplaces are inclined to comply with hybrid or distant schedules, lowering their foot site visitors.
Companies like Angelina have responded to those developments by opening new branches within the residential neighborhoods the place hybrid employees now spend a lot of their time. Final 12 months, as an illustration, Angelina debuted a web site on the Higher West Facet; the brand new location now information larger spending per buyer numbers than its Midtown counterpart.
Adjustments in buyer habits are only one facet of Bryant Park’s ongoing industrial growth. The al fresco restaurant Bryant Park Grill, as an illustration, has operated from behind the New York Public Library since 1995. Regardless of serving to to herald Bryant Park’s rebirth, the Grill was unable to renew its lease and can shutter this spring, changed by a brand new restaurant from movie star chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
5 years after the arrival of COVID, the town’s industrial retail trade has largely recovered — with rents surpassing $100 per sq. foot in key retail corridors, surpassing pre-pandemic ranges. However holding these figures rising requires foresight and planning, as Central Enterprise Districts — similar to Bryant Park and the Monetary District — evolve into what Winograd refers to as Central Existence Districts.
With extra versatile, hybrid work fashions, “folks 1745690523 take a look at their days wholly otherwise,” Winograd says. They need full-service, lifestyle-oriented neighborhoods — and bakeries are an excellent match for this mannequin. Low-cost and fast, they provide WiFi-friendly house for conferences or Zooms, or meals and snacks for many who want to work open air in locations like Bryant Park itself. Such shifts, in flip, proceed to remodel workplace hubs like Bryant Park into mixed-use neighborhoods with retailers concentrating on — and assembly — “24/7” buyer calls for.
Which is why, regardless of the already crowded market, enterprise house owners like Ramirez would bounce on the probability to open much more bakeries on West fortieth Road. As a result of for now, not less than, he says, “competitors is an effective factor.”
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