Grub Street

Whether Hudson Yards is a windswept corporate outpost or a mash-up of West Chelsea and Herald Square, whoever lives and works there will need to eat. At a presentation before 1,000 architects, planners, and onlookers last night, design-team leaders described the commissary aspects of their proposals. Predictably, the Brookfield team, which reunites the High Line’s landscape architects, invoked a “café culture” with street-level seating under the trestle’s 30th Street entrance, shown above. We predict sustainable purveyors in the Alice Waters mode.

Margie Ruddick of Wallace, Roberts & Todd, speaking for Durst/Vornado’s ample western lawn, said “a Shake Shack or something” could enliven the public space. Ruddick used Shake Shack as an example; though Danny Meyer already has Hudson Yards Catering in place, he is not officially partnered with any developers. And Tishman Speyer–Morgan Stanley, which would cluster office skyscrapers on the east and cantilever luxury condos over the High Line at Twelfth Avenue, pledged itself to a greenmarket. All these, like the proposals themselves, merely stir ingredients into a cauldron of potential deals over the decade-long build-out. We’re confident that street vendors will roll kebab and fruit carts up to the platform, and that whoever offers delivery had better buy a whole lot of bikes. —Alec Appelbaum

Related: Untangling the Mess Around the Hudson Yards Project [NYM]