Somehow I was marketed a free day pass to the relatively new SaksWorks at 250 Vesey, but unbeknownst to me, the place was traded from WeWork to Convene, so my pass was no good. But since I had trekked down, I paid the $40 for the day pass — I needed a work retreat for a few hours. And since I had to pay, I was going to get a post out of it. So here we are.

I had never been in the Saks Fifth Avenue Men’s Store, which opened above PJ Clarke’s in 2017. When you approach from the north, it’s hidden in a corner of the second floor of 250 Vesey, but it’s more accessible to the Winter Garden. Saks closed the men’s store in January 2020; the bigger women’s store at Brookfield closed in January 2019 and is now the events space Convene.

Saks made a pitch to the CB1 Licensing Committee (which was more or less rejected) in May 2020 to create a very spacious, swanky place for work meetings, with cocktails. The square footage is 11,000 with a capacity of 255 and no kitchen — no real ovens, no fryers — so it wasn’t going to be a real restaurant. But they then reverted back to a standard issue WeWork and opened here in November 2021. In August the space traded hands to Convene.

I’ve explored a few WeWorks before and this one is a bit less appealing. It’s one big open space, and the shared work spaces are mostly long open tables. (I usually snag a booth when I work in the common spaces at a WeWork.) There’s the usual tea, coffee and snacks. But what this joint really has going for it is the view. And access to the Brookfield mall and Hudson Eats is a plus.

The rate is $349 a month, and you have to commit to three months initially. After that it’s month-to-month. There are phone booths plus two-to-three person rooms that come with the membership that you can reserve for an hour at a time, and conference rooms for rent for $75 an hour. It’s fairly quiet — at least it is today — with the hum of the heating unit and the music-of-unknown-genre running very low in the background. (I have to say — that’s my least favorite thing about WeWorks. In those places I wear noise-cancelling headphones.)

SaksWorks
250 Vesey, Suite 201
888-730-7307