Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Google Earth, WTHN
Late 2019 was an inauspicious moment to get into the communal shvitzing business, but Bathhouse pulled it off. The space, 10,000 square feet of purple grow lights, mosaic tiles, and massive indoor plants in a former soda factory on North 10th Street, was closed by the shutdown just a few months after it opened but found its saunas and cold-plunge pools swarmed as the city reopened and inched back to life. It was a good time to get “well.” Four years later, weekends routinely sell out in advance and on a recent visit on a rainy Tuesday — a “quiet” morning, says co-founder Jason Goodman — I saw around 40 people milling around the Veronica Carpenter Architects–designed facilities, ranging from Equinox-toned 20-somethings to senior citizens in baggy swim trunks. It’s pretty much the same story at the Flatiron location, which is three times the size, Goodman says. They would soon be expanding to the 18,000-square-foot building next door (including the roof), once used by the Brooklyn Brewery, to accommodate demand. “I’ve lived in Williamsburg for 21 years,” he says. He knows the neighborhood, knows the people: “They’re going to a spa once a week, getting a facial once a month.”
A string of recent openings within walking distance of Bathhouse seem to bear this out. In a several-block cluster between Kent and Berry, there’s Glow Bar (facials), Glo Boutique Spa (spa, massage, laser), Skin Laundry (facials), Ever/Body (injectables, microneedling), Hand and Stone (massage and facials), Wthn (acupuncture, cupping, and herbal supplements), and the soon-to-be-opened Othership (sauna and cold-plunge). A person could spend several days subjecting her body to an array of healthful rigors and pampering rituals without even calling an Uber. Welcome to Williamsburg’s Wellness Corridor.
While the trend toward self-prodding and improvement is national, the brokers and businesspeople I spoke with pointed out that North Williamsburg is a particularly strong spot for these brands. In the past 15 years, the neighborhood has grown both markedly wealthier and older — the luxury towers along the waterfront are full of wealthy professionals in their 30s and 40s, a demographic that’s starting to look and feel its age and has the means to do something about it. “There are more wellness spaces opening than bars,” says Brandon Singer, who runs retail brokerage MONA Retail. These businesses are also particularly well-suited to what you might call Williamsburg’s economic microclimate: People have money, but not necessarily second-home money, so they tend to be around on weekends. They’re also working from home, which allows for a mid-day Juvederm or micropeel pop-in. (The ergonomic fallout of remote work has also, apparently, been good for business: “Everyone is injuring themselves working from home,” says one bodywork proprietor.)
“There’s definitely a lot more affluence in the neighborhood,” says Rachel Beider, who first moved to Williamsburg in 2001. She opened PRESS Modern Massage seven years later, which makes it something of an elder in the Corridor. (PRESS is on North 11th, just behind Bathhouse, and in the same complex as a chiropractor and acupuncturist.) Beider now has four locations in New York — her second, in Greenpoint, opened because the Williamsburg location’s nine treatment rooms were overwhelmed. “My first clients were yoga teachers and bartenders,” she says. “Now we see realtors, doctors, lawyers.” There’s also steady demand for this kind of thing from the trio of nearby hotels — the Wythe, the William Vale, and the Hoxton — which attract a monied and spa-seeking clientele but don’t offer their own services. Now, the concierge can just as easily recommend laser facials at Skin Laundry as they can dinner at Le Crocodile.
Even as the neighborhood grows wealthier, North Williamsburg remains, at least for now, more affordable to wellness start-ups and small local brands than a few blocks south, closer to the subway. In the past 15 years, Williamsburg has followed a Soho-like retail progression from small, independent shops to a destination for mainstream giants like Apple and J. Crew, DTC companies like Everlane and Parachute, as well as super high-end brands like Hermes and Chanel (albeit Chanel Beauty). As a result, rents on North 6th are now pushing a Soho-esque $350 per square foot. But four blocks north, around North 10th and 11th, however, the asking rents are half that, with some recent deals at closer to $100 per square foot, according to Emily Green, a director at retail brokerage Brand Urban.
This also allows for a certain level of experimentation for brands looking to break into national markets — a proving ground for niche retail concepts. Opening in Williamsburg is also, at this point, its own form of advertising. Brands want to catch the attention of the tourists who stay at the Hoxton and can talk them up when they get back to Stockholm or Vancouver. “People think it’s a cool neighborhood,” says Chris DeCrosta, a founder of GoodSpace, a boutique commercial advisory firm, “and brands think it’s a cool neighborhood.”
It’s also the kind of place where people are pleasantly intrigued when presented with the opportunity to try, say, earseeding. They want to know if red-light therapy will make them look forever 35. “They’re really forward thinking,” says Michelle Larivee, the CEO and founder of Wthn, the acupuncture spot, which first opened in the Flatiron in 2019 but came to Williamsburg this January. And, founders hope, they’re willing to be loyal — many, following the model laid out by Drybar, offer memberships that provide services at lower prices to encourage regular visits. It’s a wellness routine they’re looking to establish, not a wellness one-off. (Gwyneth Paltrow likes to start every day with a dry brush and a 30-minute infrared sauna; her husband, meanwhile, is “an obsessive cold-plunger.”)
But how much wellness can one small corner of the neighborhood really sustain? When I asked some of the business owners if they felt at all wary about the arrival of so many other, similar businesses, they ranged from nonchalant to excited. In fact, everyone seemed to think the new spots help create a kind of self-care ecosystem, whereby people coming for acupuncture would add in a visit to the chiropractor or pair a barre class with a massage and facial. Indeed, several people shared their own maintenance circuits. (For Larivee, it’s Bar Method, acupuncture at Wthn, followed by Sushi on Jones.) Though not everyone was perfectly zen about rising competition from the national chains: “Those are here already? Damn!” one proprietor replied when I said Skin Laundry and Ever/Body had opened nearby.
To DeCrosta, the brand retail adviser, this is just what retail density looks like in 2024, at least in Williamsburg. The Upper East Side block where he first lived after moving to the city had a shoe-repair guy, a wine store, a bodega, and a dry cleaner — those felt like essentials to him. Now, in its own weird, 2020s Williamsburg way, an acupuncturist, a bathhouse, a massage spot, and a barre studio fit the same mold. “People are paying a ton of money to live in this neighborhood,” he says. “Why should they have to travel to get what they need?”