It's not exactly news anymore that the Financial District has been pretty thoroughly reinvented from a center of international commerce into a very desirable Manhattan residential neighborhood... that also happens to be the center of international commerce. But for all the top-notch apartment listings in the Financial District -- and there are many, from pre-war rental apartments like those at 37 Wall Street or 71 Broadway or The Crest to the ultra-luxe new construction rental apartments at 90W -- one thing the neighborhood has lacked is, for lack of a better word, the things that make Manhattan neighborhoods feel like Manhattan neighborhoods. Slowly but surely, though, that's changing. With the announcement that the Financial District's Andaz Hotel will be sponsoring a new Financial District Greenmarket, FiDi foodies will finally have a place to get the fresh local produce, meat and seafood their neighborhood has been missing. And an ambitious plan to reimagine traffic-saturated Water Street as a green byway suggests that more neighborhoodiness could be in the offing for the Financial District. This is good news for a bunch of reasons.
First, about that Financial District farmer's market. Your Luxury Rentals Manhattan blogger is admittedly something of a greenmarket dork, but given the relative dearth of great food shopping options in the Financial District at present -- there are already plenty of fine restaurants -- this is especially good news even for those who value a good head of kale less than your blogger. "The Andaz Wall Street's Farmers Market will debut July 10 and return every Saturday through November 20," the Village Voice's Fork In The Road blog reports. "Participating vendors are all suppliers to the hotel, and Wall & Water restaurant's executive chef, Maximo Lopez May, will offer monthly cooking classes using their ingredients."
Which is very cool, but could be made that much cooler if Water Street -- the multi-lane road at the bottom of Manhattan -- becomes the tree-lined, pedestrian-friendly space envisioned by The Alliance for Downtown New York. "The plan includes a broad reconfiguration of the roadway by scaling down Water Street and making the area more pedestrian-friendly through the addition of plazas and landscaped space," The Real Deal reports. "Also integral to the plan is a reevaluation of current Water Street zoning, the Downtown Alliance said, in order to allow more ground-floor retail activity."
While the Downtown Alliance doesn't expect the initiative to be complete until 2020, the very fact that it's coming is good news. What the Financial District will look like by then is anyone's guess, but considering where it was 10 years ago, it's a good bet that the FiDi will be a pretty nice place to live -- and likely home to even more luxury rental listings. At the very least, that farmer's market will make it easier to find garlic scapes in season. And that's good news, because they're delicious.
