Google’s St. John’s Terminal office building (right), next to a rising new residential tower in New York’s Hudson Square, a neighborhood carved out of SoHo and the West Village. (Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images.)

I f you build it, will they come for dinner? The restaurants opening in Hudson Square have been receiving press for taking a bet that the oddly named—and shaped—neighborhood (hint: it’s not a square) will become a destination. But on a warm Saturday night in May, the streets were quiet compared to their neighbors in SoHo and the West Village—even TriBeCa. Unless you count the drinkers outside the Ear Inn.

New Yorkers tend to focus on chefs. But like everything in New York’s hospitality industry, it’s really about real estate. Having learned in the last decade that a good restaurant is the best amenity, some of New York’s biggest developers like Tishman Speyer and Related Companies have been essentially throwing money at restaurateurs in order to put a new shine on their properties or create a neighborhood from scratch. (See: Rockefeller Center and Hudson Yards, respectively.) It’s a strategy backed by real estate industry data: Food and beverage options are the second most important amenity after commute access.

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