It's been about 10 years since the Meatpacking District fully shifted from, well, actual meat packing along with a few adventurous nightspots to a major designer shopping destination. While fearless restaurants like the much loved Florent, and bars and clubs like Hell, the Lure and Jackie 60 gave the neighborhood a cool and even racy cachet, the retail invasion inaugurated by luxury players Jeffrey, Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen eventually swept those pioneering businesses away, along with Western Beef and the butchers.
Next came the renovated High Line park, a couple of glitzy, modern attention-getting hotels, and louder, more mainstream bars and restaurants with "disco brunches" which are setting the stage for a third phase of development that threatens to wipe away the high end designers in favor of more mainstream national brands and chains accustomed to paying higher rents.
Cachet and prestige are fragile things, and just as quickly as the westernmost stretch of 14th Street became an elite shopping area, it may soon become a more populist one. Stella McCartney is already out in favor of SoHo, perhaps thinking that if she is going to be in a busy tourist area, she should take maximum advantage of potential traffic. Alexander McQueen's store is reportedly weighing its options as its lease comes up for renewal. Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent wound up choosing SoHo as well when it came time to place upcoming Downtown boutiques.
Lucrative for its landlords, but less interesting for customers, the new development is vexing for the area's residents, many of whom feel that the small neighborhood has hit the limit for traffic and activity. WWD is reporting that the arrival of the Whitney Museum in 2015 is also pushing up rents in the neighborhood. New York designers and longtime Meatpacking boutique Rubin & Chapelle has just closed its 14th street shop and will reopen shortly in SoHo. Meanwhile, it seems that high end designers are being replaced not by others like them, but less expensive contemporary brands like Alice & Olivia, which is taking over McCartney's store and moving its showroom upstairs as well. While on Madison Avenue, such brands mix easily with more rarefied designers, downtown, it looks like they are pushing them away, Diane von Furstenberg's more gently priced contemporary brand with its prominent corner boutique and headquarters seems to be setting the pace for the neighborhood the way Jeffrey did 10 years ago.
Jeffrey, now owned mostly by Nordstrom, looks like he is staying put, but his new neighbors seem not as likely to attract the sort of folks who are willing to invest in his stratospherically priced goods. UGG is coming soon. Sephora is already there, and what is expected to take root in the area sounds like more stores which are already well represented throughout the city, making the neighborhood a still charming, but no longer an especially unique destination. While this might be great for Scoop, Vince, Intermix, Levi's and all those premium denim shops, it might not be so favorable for the more luxurious Krizia (pictured above), Ports 1961 and Moschino, each a single flagship for its brand in New York and relatively recent arrivals to the neighborhood who may have hoped for things to move in a more pure luxury direction.
The other factor is the possible expansion of the Chelsea Market, the food and office complex which was a major factor in the neighborhood's earlier transformation. Crain's tells us that Owner Jamestown Property wants to keep the momentum going with a 330,000 square foot addition atop the building which would include yet another hotel. Community groups are not happy even though they love the building's food market which features a series of independent culinary businesses (as well as the controversial addition of Anthropologie in a prominent space).
How much is too much is an endless debate that takes place all over the city. Do you miss shopping at Bodum and Stella McCartney on the same block as Western Beef, or are you happier that there's yet another Sephora downtown?
The Meatpacking District's Changing Face by David Moin (WWD)
Chelsea Market tops itself by Theresa Agovino (Crain's)