BY SEAN EGAN | It seems as though yet another familiar face will soon be calling Hudson Yards home: Amazon. However, unlike recently ensconced tenant Coach, Inc., rather than renting room out to function as office space, the high-profile online retailer will be moving in a different, and perhaps unexpected, direction: opening up a brick-and-mortar store and café in the fast-developing Manhattan neighborhood.
As reported in the New York Post, citing two unnamed inside sources, the store would arrive sometime around 2018 or 2019, in a yet to be determined building in the complex. “I don’t know if the final lease was signed yet, but I know the deal is happening,” one source is quoted as saying in the piece. This news arrives after another recent deal solidifying Amazon’s ties to the city, scoring a $30 million contract selling e-books to New York’s school district.
The move to real-world retail is not unprecedented for Amazon, who recently opened their first physical location in November 2015, with a confirmed second location to arrive in San Diego. Under the name Amazon Books, the Seattle location offers reads popular with Amazon users for sale — usually ones boasting four-star and above ratings on the website — and features quotes from user reviews beneath the volumes. In addition, the store guarantees to sell books at the price they’re valued at on its online counterpart.
The store also functions as a showroom of sorts for the retailer’s own gadgets, such as its Kindle e-reader. This experiment could potentially become commonplace for the company; earlier this year it was leaked that Amazon might consider opening a few hundred similar stores — somewhat ironically taking up the mantle left by Borders, the chain bookstore whose decline many believe Amazon helped facilitate.
The move would also serve to add to the ever-expanding portfolio of big-name tenants of Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group — Hudson Yards’ developers — which have found many companies gravitating toward the $20 billion, 28-acre complex being built on the West Side (btw. 10th Ave. & the West Side Highway, and W. 30th & W. 34th Sts).
While the aforementioned Coach was the first tenant to move in, settling down a little over a month ago, companies such as TimeWarner, HBO, CNN, and Wells Fargo Securities are set to follow suit by 2019. Prestigious law firms Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP and Boies, Schiller & Flexner are on track to step in earlier, in 2018.
This comes in addition to the expansive slate of restaurants (including a location of local favorite Whitmans, and new offerings from chefs José Andrés and Costas Spiliadis) and retail options (such as the city’s first Neiman Marcus department store). All things told, the development would add about $19 billion to the city’s GDP, accrue $500 million in taxes, and produce over 55,000 new jobs.
However, mum’s still the word on the potential bookstore from the entities actually involved in the deal. In a statement to Fortune, Amazon said, “We do not comment on rumors or speculation.”
Similarly, Chelsea Now received the following quote from a Related Companies rep: “When it comes to potential tenants, we can’t confirm or deny who we may (or may not) be speaking with.”
Nonetheless, the speculation itself speaks to the exceptional promise businesses and the community are seeing in Hudson Yards — which should be totally complete by 2025.
