The southernmost leg of Sixth Avenue has been more of a place to pass through than to visit since the 1920s, when the city blasted subway lines through parts of MacDougal and Sullivan streets, then covered the tracks with a new roadway.
And developers may have been dissuaded from doing anything about that. The massive infrastructure project left the road, formally known as the Avenue of the Americas, lined with castaway lots whose odd shapes discouraged construction.
But as Soho’s retail hub balloons, and Hudson Square (the area that lies west of 6th Ave. to the Hudson river from West Houston to Canal) becomes a viable office district, developers are giving the skinny stretch a second look. A shortage of buildable land downtown is also playing a part in the area’s growing popularity.
Several major condo and office projects are now underway on the strip, which is hung with rusted medallions from the Latin American countries that gave the thoroughfare its official name.
To be sure, the area is still something of a bargain for the neighborhood. Retail rents on West Broadway, where most stores are located, are about $400 a square foot. That’s less than half of the cost on prime Soho blocks closer to Broadway, where the going rate is nearly $1,000 a foot.
Then again, 1 Soho Square, a stylishly revamped former factory complex that will ask $80 per foot for office rents, is mounting credible competition to the top of the market in Hudson Square which contains the bulk of the neighborhood’s offices.
Still, with the infusion of new residents, office workers and shops, it may not be long until the western edge of Soho and Hudson Square become virtually one single uniform nabe again.