Where is New York’s Nightlife District?

By Gamal Hennessy

Many major cities have designated areas where nightlife concentrates. Vegas has the Strip. New Orleans has Bourbon Street. South Beach has Ocean Drive. London has Leicester Square. New York has pockets of venues scattered all over the city, but what if there was a central area that was easy to get to, isolated from local residents, and big enough to house the next generation of mega clubs? Could something like that work here? Would we want it to?

Diane Vacca of Chelsea Now reported last week that members of community boards 4 and 5 in Midtown are in the initial stages of a plan that would designate areas in the Garment District (between 34th and 41st Streets and 6th and 9th Avenues) as a manufacturing zone. By using a non residential area for larger nightclubs like the venues currently in West Chelsea, the boards hope to give the residents of the quality of life they are looking for while providing space for a vital part of New York’s culture and economy.

Clubs have had conflict in recent years with local residents, community boards and police where local residents complain that the club’s activities are detrimental to the neighborhood and club operators complaining that they don’t have the tools or authority to solve the problems and remain in business. The encroachment of residential buildings into traditional nightlife areas has exacerbated the problem, which probably had a lot to do with this proposal.

Creating an Ocean Drive in Midtown wouldn’t radically alter the geography of most of the cities venues. Local bars, live music venues, lounges, speakeasies, and wine bars would still flourish all over New York. But mega clubs like the historic Palladium, Roxy and the Limelight, recent venues like Crobar and Lotus and current clubs like Webster Hall and Home need more space, generate more street noise and cause more late night traffic congestion than the smaller venues. Creating an area for them could help isolate the inevitable issues that come up.

There are at least two issues with the current plan, both turn on economics. The first question is “How do mega clubs fit into the future of New York nightlife?” The desire for operators to sink money into a mega club might not be very strong. Real estate costs are still fairly high, even in a recession. Liquor licenses are still a time intensive process that can tie up an investment for up to a year. Operating costs might be prohibitive in this district if patrons are planning to hop from club to club like in New Orleans, but are unwilling to pay substantial covers five or six times in one night. And the ability to pack a mega club with patrons on a consistent basis might be challenging without a point of difference to set them apart from the club next door. Steven Lewis has noticed a dispersal of nightlife from a few large venues to many small ones. In that kind of environment, can a mega club survive?

The second issue has to do with the zoning of the area itself. Ms. Vacca reports that the city is unwilling at this point to rezone the area for a nightlife district. Altering their position may take some time. Even if they succeed, operators run the risk of sinking investment capital into properties in a nightlife district only to find that the area is rezoned for residential once they make the area trendy enough for residential developers. This pattern has played itself out in the Meatpacking District and West Chelsea. Vegas and South Beach have created nightlife zones and maintain that status. If a similar New York zone is going to exist, local government needs to have the same commitment to maintain it.

Neither of these obstacles is insurmountable. A specific nightlife zone could spark growth in nightlife similar to what we saw in the mid 1970’s with the rise of Studio 54. Fresh capital and new ideas like a nightlife zone could be the start of a new age in the nightlife industry.

Have fun.
Gamal