Bryant Park vs NoMad: Office Space Compared

The $34 gap and what actually drives it

Bryant Park's median asking rent is $96 per square foot per year and NoMad's is $62, a gap of $34 a foot: Bryant Park asks about 54% more, or NoMad comes in about 35% under. Against the $75 median across the 49 floors on our book, Bryant Park sits roughly 28% above the city and NoMad about 17% below.

Product drives it rather than one expensive tower. Bryant Park's four floors run $65 to $125 and NoMad's run $57 to $90, and a median of four is set by its middle pair: $95 and $96 uptown against $62 and $62 in NoMad, where two adjacent Broadway addresses ask exactly the same number.

What matters more than either median is the overlap, and it is wide. Bryant Park's cheapest floor asks $65 while NoMad's most expensive asks $90, so the cheapest way into the dear submarket undercuts the dearest way into the cheap one by $25 a foot. Two furnished tower floors make the point cleanly: 1450 Broadway's entire 40th, 4,109 square feet at $95 and about $32,530 a month, against the Empire State Building's partial 43rd, 5,621 square feet at $90 and about $42,158. Five dollars a foot apart. The 54% is a fact about two books, and only sometimes about the two floors a tenant is choosing between.

What we hold in each, and who fits

Size runs opposite to price here, which is what makes the comparison worth writing down.

• Bryant Park: 4 floors, 4,109 to 17,296 square feet, roughly 23 to 99 desks at the 175 square feet per person we plan around, asking $65 to $125.
• NoMad: 4 floors, 5,621 to 12,500 square feet, roughly 32 to 71 desks, asking $57 to $90.

Bryant Park holds the only floor either submarket can offer a hundred-person team, 1450 Broadway's entire 4th at 17,296 square feet and $65, about $93,687 a month. It also holds the only floor under 5,000 square feet, the entire 40th in the same building, delivered furnished and column free with three sides of light and, per our client, a second-floor amenity center. So the expensive submarket is the one with stock at both ends.

NoMad owns the middle instead, and owns it cheaply. Between roughly 32 and 71 desks it offers four choices where Bryant Park offers two: 22 West 27th Street at 6,000 square feet and $57 runs about $28,500 a month, 1235 Broadway at 9,500 and $62 about $49,083, 1239 Broadway at 12,500 and $62 about $64,583, that last described to us as built for a team of 75 to 80 with polished concrete and exposed ceilings. Both Broadway floors carry a walkthrough we can send today.

Getting there, and getting people there

Bryant Park is served by the B/D/F/M, the 7 and the N/Q/R/W at 42nd. NoMad has the N/R/W, the 6 and the F/M at 23rd and 28th. The overlap is not incidental: the N, R, W, F and M all run through both, so much of a team already commuting to one can reach the other without a transfer. The decision is twenty blocks, not a different railroad.

Where they genuinely part is the regional catchment. The 7 and the 42nd Street cluster put Bryant Park within reach of the commuter flow, the argument you make to a candidate coming in from Westchester or Connecticut. NoMad answers to the Lexington line instead and sits closer to where a lot of growth-stage staff already live, with Flatiron, Murray Hill and Chelsea adjacent.

Poll home zip codes before either lease is drafted. Commute geography is a hiring cost that never appears on a rent roll, and one senior hire lost to a bad ride costs more than the rent difference on a small floor.

Our recommendation by tenant type

Above 71 desks the recommendation is arithmetic rather than preference. NoMad's largest floor is 12,500 square feet and Bryant Park carries 17,296, so a hundred-person requirement has one address on our book and it is 1450 Broadway.

Between roughly 34 and 71 desks, take NoMad, and take it on price. The $34 median gap is worth $204,000 a year on a 6,000 square foot floor, $17,000 a month, about $500 per desk per month across 34 people, which is real money against a buildout or hiring plan. A company comfortable at 22 West 27th Street or 1235 Broadway that picks Bryant Park anyway should be honest that the address is what it is buying.

Under 32 desks, Bryant Park wins by default, because NoMad currently holds nothing smaller than 5,621 square feet and Bryant Park has a furnished 4,109 square foot floor at about $32,530 a month.

The one tenant we steer uptown regardless of the gap is the client-facing business that runs meetings out of its own office. 500 Fifth Avenue's entire 55th, 6,928 square feet at $125 and about $72,167 a month, and 5 Bryant Park's entire 33rd, 7,500 square feet at $96 and $60,000, are rooms you can put a board inside. The 33rd is offered furnished through March 2028, which reads as a term-limited deal and should be confirmed as one on the tour.

The practical next step

Both submarkets fit into one afternoon. They are twenty blocks apart and we hold floors in each, so four to six is a comfortable day. Walking a 4,109 square foot tower floor after a 12,500 square foot loft floor ends the argument faster than any comparison table.

Bring the headcount you expect in two years rather than today's, since that number decides whether NoMad is in play at all. Ask both landlords for usable square footage alongside the rentable figure, since loss factor varies building to building and two floors quoted at the same size can differ by a thousand usable feet. Establish whether each floor is direct or sublease, settle how electric and cleaning are handled, then put free rent, the allowance and the escalation cap from both side by side in the same week. Judge the two on taking rent rather than asking rent: on floors this size those three terms routinely move a deal by more than the $34 separating the medians.