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Meta just planted a major flag on Fifth Avenue with a five-story playground to host its vision of the future.
The tech giant signed a 10-year lease on a 15,000-square-foot townhouse at 697 Fifth Avenue at 55th Street, for its first East Coast flagship retail concept, Meta Lab. The deal, announced by Vornado Realty Trust, marks a significant expansion of Meta’s physical retail ambitions, as well as a notable shift in how the company wants New Yorkers to experience its products.
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Meta Lab is being pitched as a “people-first experiential retail space,” which in practice means a hands-on environment where visitors can test drive the company’s AI-powered glasses and virtual reality headsets, with an emphasis on play, discovery and creative expression. The idea is to demystify emerging tech by letting people actually use it, which is how shopping used to work anyway.
Each Meta Lab location is shaped by its neighborhood, co-created with local artists and communities around a distinct creative theme. In New York, that theme is skate culture, capturing the city’s countercultural energy through a mix of art, history and hands-on experiences. The space features an archival wall and timeline from Zoo York tracing NYC skate culture from the 1960s to today, alongside a coffee shop serving drinks from Buddies Coffee Roasters, founded by former pro skater Taylor Nawrocki and Rachel Nieves. Visitors can also explore a multi-dimensional mural from pro skater Zered Bassett’s “Paper Skaters” series, browse gear and ephemera from woman-founded Rookie Skateboards and step into an interactive gallery by Evan Mock that uses Meta glasses to immerse guests in the evolution of skate culture across the city.
“We’re proud to make a long-term commitment to Fifth Avenue, the heart of U.S. retail,” said Meta's Matt Jacobson, VP and Creative Director, Wearables, in a statement. “Our people-first approach to experiential retail is rooted in culture, creativity, and self-expression and it’s driving meaningful sales and awareness of our products. Placing our flagship store alongside the brands that help define culture, will distinguish Meta Lab from traditional consumer electronics retail. There’s no better home than NYC to innovate on retail, and we’ll continue to celebrate the community while making our products easy to see, try, and understand.”
If this iteration of in-person buying sounds familiar, it’s because Meta has been quietly testing the concept elsewhere. A flagship opened in Los Angeles in 2025, and a pop-up version of Meta Lab previously occupied the Fifth Avenue address, where it reportedly drew strong crowds. This new lease makes the experiment permanent, upping the stakes in one of the world's most competitive retail corridors.
It’s also another sign of Meta’s deepening ties to the city. The company has had a significant presence in New York since 2007, one cemented in 2020 with a massive office lease at the Farley Building in the Penn District. This new flagship adds a highly visible, street-level component to that footprint, and invites the public to engage directly with the technology.
Whether Meta Lab becomes a must-visit attraction or just another curiosity on Fifth Avenue remains to be seen. But as retail continues its post-pandemic reinvention, it looks like the future of shopping in New York is going to be a lot more interactive.
Meta Lab, 697 Fifth Avenue, is open Monday–Saturday, 10am–7pm, and Sundays from 11am-6pm.