News that world-class New York chef Daniel Boulud will bring a large restaurant to One Vanderbilt won’t fill the tower’s nearly 1.7 million square feet of office space overnight — but it sure helps.
With a move, developer SL Green has put a popular, human face on the $3.1 billion skyscraper it’s building next to Grand Central Terminal. The deal lends the spectacular tower more cachet than first office tenant TD Bank, which is taking 200,000 square feet, including a retail branch.
As we first reported Monday on 24hbongdda.site, Boulud will launch an 11,000-square-foot eatery on One Vanderbilt’s second floor overlooking the teeming corner of Vanderbilt Avenue and 42nd Street. He’ll also have an Epicerie Boulud grab-and-go outlet at sidewalk level.
The breakthrough comes as SL Green talks to prospective office tenants, most notably JPMorgan Chase, which is considering moving its headquarters there. Sources said that if the bank decides instead to move to Hudson Yards or not move at all from its current Park Avenue digs, a long list of tenants seeking 100,000 to 200,000 square feet each are itching to pounce on One Vanderbilt. The tower is to open in 2020.
Last October, SL Green Managing Director Brett Herschenfeld told The Post, “We are in the latter stages of selecting one of the top restaurateurs in the world.” We’ve heard that before elsewhere, only to see another cookie-cutter “food hall.”
Unlike most of his competitors, Boulud has never had to close a Manhattan restaurant. His empire runs the gamut of price points, from burger-happy DBGB on the Bowery to top-end Restaurant Daniel on East 64th Street — with DB Bistro Moderne, Bar Boulud, Boulud Sud and Cafe Boulud in between.
SL Green is landlord to some great restaurants — most notably to Eleven Madison Park at 11 Madison Ave. (Coincidentally, Eleven Madison Park’s owners also plan a major eatery at another major new Midtown office project, L&L Holding Co.’s 425 Park Ave.)
But the deal with Boulud is of a different kind than SL Green has done in the past. “If there’s a departure here, it’s that we are actually partnering with Daniel — something we haven’t done before,” SL Green CEO Marc Holliday told us.
“We will put up the majority of the money for the project, but Daniel will put in some of his own as well,” Holliday said. “Daniel’s company, the Dinex Group, will manage and run the restaurant.” One Vanderbilt’s owners are SL Green and South Korea Pension Services, which bought a 27 percent stake last year, and Hines, which has 1.4 percent.
Boulud said, “We talked to them for a long time. We feel good together and I’m excited about this.”
Will his new place be French-inspired, like his others in New York? “It will be a fine restaurant,” Boulud said, but declined to discuss it beyond that — other than to say with a laugh, “It will not be Italian.”
