After 12 Years of Planning, a New Office Development at the Old Jones Diner Site

It’s a NoHo development more than a dozen years in the making, and now nearly ready for occupancy.

The irregularly shaped parcel at 363 Lafayette Street, which once housed the Jones Diner, and later, high-profile advertecture, is now a ten-story mixed-use office building. No longer just in blueprints, but in real life.

Architect Morris Adjmi designed the new development, which includes a showroom on the ground floor and community facility space on the second and third floors. The Landmarks Preservation Commission previously granted its approval of the project in August 2016, as was necessary given its location in the NoHo Historic District Extension.

Olmstead Properties, which has owned the 5,500 square-foot site since the 1940s, previously planned a mixed-use building in 2007 (and had a zoning variance), but that proposal ultimately fizzled. The firm then put the property on the market in January 2015 for $35 million yet settled on a 49-year lease with developer CBSK Ironstate later that year.

The rather unique shape of this lot is a function of the city having widened Lafayette Street, between Houston and Great Jones, in the early 1900s.