BY LAUREN VESPOLI | With the park and the Greenmarket, which was founded in 1976, Union Square has a history of facilitating healthy living for New Yorkers. Now, high-end juice shops and niche fitness centers have infiltrated the neighborhood, and it’s easy to connect these developments to the youthful corporate culture of tech companies, known for emphasizing a work-life balance and active, healthy lifestyles.
The new Union Square fitness centers are not your regular gyms, but rather studios for the practice of current workout trends. Walking up to 14th St. along University Place, it’s hard to miss signs for the new Reebok FitHub, slated to open this month at 1 Union Square West. FitHub is Reebok’s 4,800-square-foot ground-floor retail space, combined with a 6,800-square-foot basement cross-fit center.
In addition, the neighborhood’s second SoulCycle recently opened at 8 W. 19th St., a mere one block from the popular original Union Square location, at 12 E. 18th St., where celebrities such as Jake Gyllenhaal have been known to attend classes.
Accordingly, the number of places at which one can grab a post-workout kale juice or quinoa bowl is also on the rise. Perhaps, after a rigorous cycling cession, you crave a “pre-industrial” meal? Hu Kitchen, at Fifth Ave. and 14th St., specializes in dishes created with food ingredients that could have existed before the Industrial Revolution. The restaurant, which opened in fall 2012, includes menu items such as an “Organic Primal Kale Salad” and chocolate chia pudding. Feel Food, a cafe and juice bar that advertises yucca puffs and hibiscus crackers in its salad bar, opened last October and is located on Sixth Ave. in between 12th and 13th Sts.
However, those in the mood for a freshly pressed juice won’t have to go all the way over to Sixth Ave. Liquiteria, the cold-pressed juice chain that began in New York in 1996, this year signed leases on two spaces on either side of Union Square Park. On the west side of the park, a store opened in February at 17th St. between Broadway and Fifth Ave., and a Union Square East shop is slated to open later this spring at the corner of 13th St. and Fourth Ave.
“The fact that they think the Union Square area can support two locations on either side of the park speaks to the strength of the district,” said Jennifer Falk, executive director of the Union Square Partnership.
For those in search of a free workout, Falk’s business improvement district also runs fitness classes in Union Square Park as part of its “Summer In the Square” weekly entertainment series. Last summer, the Partnership partnered with Paragon Sports to offer fitness classes, including a weekly running club, a boot camp class from Circuit of Change, and yoga classes from Jivamukti, a popular local yoga school.
And, in keeping with Union Square’s role as a transportation hub, according to Falk, since Citi Bike’s installation last spring, Union Square is the number one location for bike drop-offs and pickups, with 485 docking stations in the district.
But the area’s desirability runs deeper than fancy workout classes or high-end juice bars that draw visitors. A the center of it all, is the park itself, along with the Greenmarket. On a recent spring day in Union Square Park, the tulips and cherry blossoms were in full bloom. Tourists sat on benches perusing guidebooks, while shoppers browsed the Greenmarket, in search of a wine from Upstate or cheese from Vermont.
The BID constantly works to keep the park looking great with plantings and ongoing gardening and maintenance.
“We believe that the health and wellness of the park is a reflection of health and wellness of the district as a whole,” Falk said. “We are working right now to make Union Square looks its very best for the spring and summer.”
