We’ve had our eye on the plans for the closed “gentlemens lounge” far west on 47^th St for some time now, and this week DNAinfo discovered the full plans, including the name. The new venue will be known as “Esquire NYC Gentleman’s Club”, and is going to full five entire floors.

The initial plans were classing the establishment as a restaurant, which we naïvely believed.

If you look close enough, you can see they’ve completely demolished the existing floors, leaving just the surrounding walls of the building up:

The club is planning to be “very upscale”, and apparently won’t have lineups, nor will it advertise with flyers, which should come as great news to anyone who’s had to dodge one of the guys handing out flyers along 8^th Ave for the various clubs over there.

A new outpost of the cosmetics brand Kiehl’s will be taking over from the former bike store at 47^th & 9^th, as the subtle plywood put up recently hints at:

This marks yet another chain¹ opening up on 9^th Ave, joining your Chipotles, American Apparels, etc. If this steady march frightens you, at least take some comfort in the fact that “they” haven’t yet make their way over to 10^th Ave (although you could say the incoming monster developments along 10^th & 11^th are doing just as good a job).

Back to the present, the bike store previously at the location closed down at the start of last month, semi-​relocating to 10^th Ave, and less than a month later there’s a new tenant. Meanwhile, spots like the former Subway store and closed sushi place have sat empty for months. Those corner spots are irresistible.

Oh, and they’re hiring.

The plywood has come down outside the rapidly-​approaching Green Rancho, revealing a much classier exterior than the previous Lime Jungle:

Here’s a “sneak peek” inside:

The plywood went up only a few weeks ago, after months of silence from the site, and it’s already come back down again after a massive appearance transformation. Here’s our previous coverage.

With the exterior almost ready and the interior filling up inside the store, it looks like we can expect an opening very soon. The big question is whether they stick with that slogan of “Mexico history & guacamole is our passion”.

Hell’s Kitchen can look forward to our very own outpost of the Greek restaurant Snack Taverna. The store is taking over the checkerboard store formerly home to Sandwich Planet on the corner of 39^th & 9^th, bringing their Greek menu to the area around Port Authority.

The fitout of the store is now fully underway. Lots of dust flying around with the construction:

They’ve been steadily making progress over the past few weeks. Here was the scene last month:

Snack Taverna has been part of the West Village for a decade, so this store will be opening on their “10 year anniversary” of sorts. DNAinfo have more from July about the incoming restaurant. Their plan is to open either this month or November, just in time for winter.

When we saw Havana Libre had taken over from Casa Havana, we mentioned how they chose to get rid of the “unique” street-​facing deli window, opting instead for the traditional folding doors. Over the weekend the paper came down from the windows, and they’ve taken the unique-​street-​facing-​part to a whole new level.

Less exciting, but addition to the half of the Chevrolet, the menus were also posted, and we got a glimpse at the interior of the store.

It should be open any moment!

It looks like there’s already a new tenant lined up to take over the former home of Luna Sur. Notices have been posted on the window of the vacant store at 53^rd & 9^th with contact details for Toloache, a group of Mexican bistros. The application for the store will be heard at the community board meeting next week.

Somewhat-​interestingly, the “for rent” signs are still up too, so it sounds like Toloache signing the lease is dependent on their approval at the CB meeting. The store was home to Luna Sur, who abruptly closed towards the end of August.

Toloache will be yet another Mexican spot joining those few blocks, with El Centro, Limon Jungle, Mi Nidito and more on the surrounding streets. Here’s their dinner menu from some of their other stores, for a preview of what you can look forward to, or just walk three streets down from this spot and across to 8^th Ave to find another one of their locations.

They’re not messing around with the incoming second outpost of Turco. We covered the new location last week, which had been sitting seemingly dormant for a few weeks, but it looks like whatever they were waiting for is over, and they’re getting straight in to the store fit out.

They’ll have to make the most of the small space in the old Verizon store:

In the mean time, you can get a taste (in every sense of the word) for what’s coming by checking out the original Turco at 43^rd & 9^th.

Things are heating up at the future site of a new 40+ story residential tower joining the fray of similar projects in the area. Renderings have recently been published on the fence, and they are shiny:

The lot is at 41^st & 10^th, sitting next door to St Raphael’s Church, who developer Extell bought the rights for the development from last year for almost $16½ million (no big deal). Curbed covered the plans back in January.

For future reference, here’s the site now. Try to imagine a wall of glass.

The plans have work scheduled to complete in June 2016, so don’t hold your breath.

Update: Curbed linked us! Thanks guys. Also, the site photo was linked to the wrong photo. Apologies, it’s fixed now.

We’re just on a roll today with these 10^th Ave updates. Continuing that, the “Cuban diner” Casa Havana that used to be along 10^th Ave has had its signage updated for the new incoming tenant, Havana Libre.

The former tenant, Casa Havana, used to be down in Chelsea some years ago, before closing up and ending up reopening here. Their new location unfortunately followed the same fate, which brings us to now.

Looking forward, the new location will be a Latin tapas bar, and it looks like they’ve decided to remove Casa Havana’s (this is just getting confusing) signature street-​facing deli window, and replaced it with the traditional folding doors. Won’t be long before you can get your tapas on.

The new bar and restaurant opening up across from Hell’s Kitchen Park is coming along, and recently signage has been put up with the name. ñaño will bring Ecuadorian dishes and drinks to 10^th Ave, between 47^th & 48^th.

Their website is up and has the full menu, complete with photos of each of the dishes. They’re also hiring, if you’re interested.

The spot was formerly the home of Hell’s Kitchen Pizza, whose signature shutters always stood out:

Look forward to ñaño opening in the coming months.

For the past several months the windows have been covered of the empty store just east of 51^st & 10^th. As of this week, the new tenant has been revealed to be the second coming of Totto Ramen:

We’ve had our eye on this place for a number of months now, staring at this the whole time:

Mysterious!

The new outpost is scheduled to open in the coming months, and if it’s anything like the original over on the other side of 9^th Ave along W 52^nd St, there’ll be crowds outside at all hours of the day. This, plus the other Totto Ramen, along with the new Ippudo a block west on the same street means these few blocks have basically turned into Ramen Central™.

The banner’s been up for a week or two now announcing the incoming Turco II – the “sequel” to the original Turco at 43^rd & 9^th:

The new spot is taking over from a Verizon store that closed down some time ago, just two and a half blocks up between 45^th & 46^th.

It looks roughly the same size as the original:

At first, the banner just read “Turco”, possibly signaling they were moving there. Last week they cleared any confusion up by slapping a “II” on it:

There’s no such thing as too many gyros.

Brooklyn Fare is coming to W 39^th St. Today, crews were setting up and stocking the inside, gearing up for their opening soon:

The restaurant/​supermarket hybrid will be the first Brooklyn Fare in Manhattan, with a $225 multi-​course dinner, and “a lot more seafood” that the original. It won’t be cheap. The Wall Street Journal ran an article about the incoming restaurant back in March of 2012, which more or less explains what you can expect.