Instant Neighborhood Rebranding

4/20/2010 Uncategorized

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For fans of 160over90’s branding of B3 in Philadelphia and our work for Berkeley Investments in Fort Point (that’s right, we were the masterminds of FP3 and Barbara Lynch’s growing restaurant empire there!), read the excellent article in this month’s New York Magazine about the rapid rebranding of that weird stretch of Broadway between Madison and Herald Squares (26th and 34th Streets). What I knew as the neighborhood of wholesale costume jewelry retailers, Christopher Isherwood (the Times’ theater critic) cleverly named the “Brown Zone” since it is the only part of lower Manhattan on the taxi maps without a neighborhood label (instead it is only designated with a brown tone).   

Evidently, a well-curated Ace Hotel landed there; and almost immediately, the neighborhood became a hipster destination– and with a name that might stick.

-Tim