Quartyard, the dog park, event space and beer garden in the East Village, is back.
The original park closed last summer but is now reopening in a new vacant lot just a few blocks away on 13th and Market streets. The new location has been in a soft opening all week and will have a relaunch party at 6 p.m. Friday.
An easy relocation from one vacant lot to another was the original concept of the park, said Philip Auchettl, the CEO of the design firm RAD LAB that created the park.
"The whole concept was looking at city properties that were vacant, underutilized, and the city may have had plans for them, but not for the next two, five or 10 years, so the question kept coming up of what can we do with them for now?" he said.
His answer was a coffee shop, dog park, beer garden, event space and an area for people to hang out. Auchettl started the original Quartyard while a student at NewSchool of Architecture and Design, where he and a team of other students created it as a thesis project.
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Quartyard was open at Park Boulevard and Market Street for two years, but then the city decided it was time to build a high-rise on the lot. So, Quartyard picked up and moved to 13th and Market streets. Luckily, the parks' structures are made out of shipping containers.
"That's the beauty of portable, modular shipping containers that you can literally throw on the back of a truck and rock and roll," Auchettl said.
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The new space, at around 11,000 square feet, is about half the size of the old one. But general manager Justin Navalle said he is not worried about downsizing.
"I think it's actually a benefit," he said. "A lot of these event spaces might be too big, and we're not really going for those huge artists. We want to try to find really quality music and there's a lot of locals that fit that void."
Quartyard has a three-year lease on the new lot, so they will have a little more time to settle in.
