Hold Your (Polo) Horses: The Polo Bar May Not Be Going Anywhere

Plus: Nantucket counselors saving a woman and her cats, Fellini Coffee’s second UES location, Shopify’s CEO backing votes based on taxes, Palantir’s $17.2 million private-jet bill and more

We’ve made it almost through the week everyone, or even further if you get summer Fridays off. I’m writing to you from my apartment in New York, where I am attempting to put my life back in order after ping-ponging all over the place for the past couple of months. My nails have essentially turned into claws. They need to see a manicurist so badly that it may qualify as an emergency. And don’t get me started on the state of my closet.

Today, we’re going to talk about something near and dear to my heart: The Polo Bar. It is one of New York’s great institutions, not just because of its high-powered and well-curated clientele or the near-impossibility of securing a reservation, but because it has turned eating a hamburger in a windowless basement into one of the city’s most enduring status rituals. That’s the power of Ralph Lauren for you. It really is magic.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ralph Lauren was in talks with Related Companies to move The Polo Bar four blocks north, from its current East 55th Street home to the ground floor of a new 53-story office tower at 625 Madison Avenue. A day or two later, the New York Post published what it labeled an “Exclusive,” claimingg to have confirmed that the deal was done. The Post added that Related had offered the restaurant at least two years of free rent and that its new location would be significantly larger when the tower opens, which is expected to happen in the summer of 2029.

Naturally, this produced a minor panic among the Polo Bar faithful. I received a flurry of phone calls from concerned regulars asking what I thought. I didn’t want to bother anyone at The Polo Bar (the entire staff there is amazing), and it had already been reported by the Wall Street Journal. Instead, I found the detail that paid subscribers may remember from the last newsletter: asking rents at the Polo Bar’s current property have doubled since 2019, reaching as much as $205 per square foot. This information is publicly available, if you have the time and inclination to go looking for it.

Things became even more interesting when I posted my little rent story on the RPS Instagram account. (If you’re not following it yet, you really should: @readrps. I mean, don’t I jam it down your throats enough every other letter, anyway?) First, people became extremely opinionated in the comments about The Polo Bar itself and what might happen to its particular magic if it traded its clubby basement on East 55th Street for the ground floor of a gleaming new office tower. But the most interesting part? People began claiming that, despite the Wall Street Journal story and all the coverage that followed, they knew for a fact (a fact!) that The Polo Bar was not moving. The comments section caught fire, particularly after one of the people disputing the reports identified himself as a Polo Bar employee. (And I confirmed, he is).

So today, we’ll examine the discrepancy between the published reports and current Polo Bar employees who maintain that the restaurant is not moving, including the one who described the story as “a rumor that has gotten out of hand.”

We also have a ton of interesting stuff to go over, because it has been quite a busy month hasn’t it? Aren’t things supposed to slow down in the summer? Today’s RPS also covers Nantucket camp counselors saving a woman and her cats from a house fire, Fellini Coffee opening a second Upper East Side location, Shopify’s CEO supporting more voting power for wealthy taxpayers, Mary’s Fish Camp returning to the West Village, Palantir spending $17.2 million on its CEO’s private flights, and the Waldorf Astoria turning its Grand Ballroom into a tennis court. All after the jump!