Bryant Park vs Hudson Yards: Office Space Compared

The gap is $104 a foot, and what sits behind it

Median asking rent in Bryant Park is $96 per square foot per year against $200 in Hudson Yards, a difference of $104 a foot, or 52 percent off the Hudson Yards number. Run it on the only Hudson Yards floor we hold. At 10,517 square feet and $200 it is $2,103,400 a year and about $175,283 a month; the same footprint at the Bryant Park median would be $1,009,632 and about $84,136. That is $91,147 every month, $1,093,768 a year, roughly $5.5 million across a five-year term.

Both medians describe small books rather than market indices, and the Hudson Yards one is as small as a median gets. Bryant Park's $96 is the midpoint of four floors asking $65, $95, $96 and $125, a spread wide enough to argue with. Hudson Yards' $200 is a single number on a single floor. Against the $75 median across the 49 floors we represent citywide, Bryant Park runs about 28 percent high and Hudson Yards about 167 percent high, which makes that one floor the dearest space on our whole book by a wide margin. The next most expensive thing we carry anywhere is 2 Penn Plaza at $135.

Behind the gap sit newness and scarcity. Hudson Yards is the newest office district in Manhattan, purpose-built towers raised over the West Side rail yards, and the floor in question sits high in 66 Hudson Boulevard, The Spiral. Bryant Park is trophy stock around the park, where the premium buys a protected view over green space in the middle of Midtown rather than a building finished in the last decade. Both are premium arguments. Only one costs $200.

What we hold in each, and what the books can actually house

Bryant Park is four floors, 4,109 to 17,296 square feet, roughly 23 to 99 desks at the 175 square feet per person we plan against. Hudson Yards is one floor, 10,517 square feet, about 60 desks. That asymmetry is the real story here, and no percentage captures it.

• Bryant Park: 1450 Broadway, Entire 40th Floor, 4,109 sq ft at $95, about $32,530 a month, built and furnished, column free, three sides of light; 5 Bryant Park, Entire 33rd Floor, 7,500 sq ft at $96, $60,000 a month, furnished through March 2028; 500 Fifth Avenue, Entire 55th Floor, 6,928 sq ft at $125, about $72,167 a month, described to us as filled with natural light and panoramic views; 1450 Broadway, Entire 4th Floor, 17,296 sq ft at $65, about $93,687 a month.
• Hudson Yards: 66 Hudson Boulevard, Partial 53rd Floor, 10,517 sq ft at $200, about $175,283 a month. We hold no description of that floor's condition or layout, so whether it arrives raw, pre-built or furnished is a tour question, and the first one to ask.

Put the books beside each other and the arithmetic gets uncomfortable. All four Bryant Park floors together are 35,833 square feet and about 205 desks, and they cost roughly $258,383 a month. The single Hudson Yards floor is 10,517 feet and 60 desks at $175,283. Or take the cheapest thing we hold in Bryant Park, 17,296 square feet at 1450 Broadway for about $93,687 a month: 6,779 more feet, $81,596 a month less.

Size overlap matters as much as price, and there is almost none. The 60-desk requirement Hudson Yards serves has nothing opposite it in Bryant Park, where the floors plan as 23, 40, 43 and 99. For most headcounts this is not a choice between two floors. It is a choice between a submarket with four options and a submarket with one.

Getting there

Bryant Park runs B/D/F/M, 7, N/Q/R/W at 42nd. Hudson Yards runs the 7 at 34th Street Hudson Yards, with the A/C/E and the LIRR at Penn a few blocks east. The 7 is the only service the two strings share, and it runs between them, so anyone already on that line reaches either address without a transfer. Everyone else is looking at two genuinely different commutes.

Bryant Park's case is breadth: three trunk groups at 42nd Street plus the 7, Times Square's lines a block west, Grand Central's Metro-North a short walk east. That is close to the widest catchment in Manhattan. Hudson Yards' case is Penn. The 7 serves the district itself, but the volume walks in from the A/C/E, the 1/2/3, the LIRR, NJ Transit and Amtrak a few blocks east, which is excellent for commuter rail and thinner for the east-side subway trunk.

The practical difference is the last leg. Hudson Yards asks a share of your staff to ride to the end of one line or walk west from Penn; Bryant Park puts most of them at a station under the building. Before weighing $104 a foot, collect the home stations of the people you already employ and count transfers, not minutes. A lease runs five to ten years, and twenty minutes each way is a retention cost no rent comparison shows.

The recommendation, without the hedging

For nearly every tenant reading this, Bryant Park. Half the rent, four floors instead of one, a far wider band of headcounts, and four competing floors give you somewhere to walk to mid-negotiation, which one floor never does. A company of 40 can take 500 Fifth Avenue's 55th at $125, the most expensive floor in the submarket, and still pay about $103,000 a month less than the Hudson Yards floor. A company of 99 can take 1450 Broadway's 4th at $65 and pay barely half.

Hudson Yards earns the money in one situation, and it is a real one. If the requirement is genuinely the newest construction in New York, if the building is part of what you sell to clients and candidates, and if $175,283 a month for about 60 desks is a number the business carries without arguing about it every quarter, there is no substitute anywhere on the island, because nowhere else offers a floor built this recently. That is a defensible reason to pay $200. Wanting a good address is not.

Be clear about what this comparison is worth. One floor against four is thin, and it changes the day either book moves. What would make Hudson Yards a real comparison is a second and third floor there at different sizes and price points, telling us whether $200 is the district or just this plate. Until then, treat the number as a quote rather than a market.

The practical next step

These two sit close enough to ride the 7 between, and we can put four or five floors across both in front of you in one afternoon. Tour Hudson Yards first, while the budget still feels abstract, then walk the Bryant Park floors and see whether the difference survives.

Bring the people who will sit in those rooms, and the home postal codes of the whole team. On the Hudson Yards floor, establish what our record does not carry: condition as delivered, the layout and whether it survives, the loss factor in writing, and what ownership will contribute to a buildout. Two of the four Bryant Park floors are already built and furnished, which means occupancy in weeks rather than months.

We represent tenants only and publish every rent we hold. Send the headcount you carry today, the one you expect in three years and the monthly number you will not cross, and we will model both across the full term rather than per foot.