115 West 30th Street: Office Space for Lease

What is available in the building today

One floor sits on our book here, offered as a partial rather than a whole plate, so a demising line, a shared landing and a rentable figure carrying common area come with it. At 3,500 square feet it is the third smallest floor on our Chelsea list, against availability that runs to 18,668 square feet.

• Partial 4th Floor: 3,500 square feet, $55 per square foot per year, about $16,042 a month, roughly 20 desks at the 175 square feet per person we plan against.

Our listing describes built space with one large conference room, 18 workstations and two modular phone rooms, delivered fully furnished with a brand new furniture package, and notes that the landlord can drop in two smaller meeting or breakout rooms within two to three weeks. For a team that needs to be working rather than permitting, that is the argument for this floor.

Hold onto the number 18. The floor is drawn for 18 workstations today, our 20-desk figure is a planning average rather than a count of what is installed, and the two additional rooms would come out of open area, so rooms and seats trade against each other on one plan. No photographs or floor plan are published for this space yet, a gap we would rather flag than paper over.

Reading the asking rent

Across our Chelsea list asking rents run $44 to $64 per square foot per year with a median of $56 on nine floors. Sort those nine by price and this one lands fourth, a dollar under the middle. The median across everything we represent in New York is $75, drawn from 46 published asks on 49 floors, so 115 West 30th prices about 27% below the city and at market for its own submarket.

What the same money buys nearby settles more than either median does. The two floors this one really competes with are both at 153 West 27th Street, each about 550 square feet smaller: a partial 3rd at 2,978 square feet and $44, roughly $10,919 a month, and a partial 11th at 2,937 and $60, roughly $14,685. Going the other direction, 237 West 27th Street's entire 11th is 7,158 square feet at $44, about $26,246 a month, twice the floor for 64% more rent if you are willing to build it.

The spread inside Chelsea is written by condition and by how much buildout money ownership will fund, not by the block. A built and furnished floor asks a premium over a raw one and saves the cash and the calendar a fit-out costs, which is why $55 here and $44 a few blocks south are both defensible. None of these are taking rents. What a landlord asks and what a lease records diverge through free months, improvement dollars and escalation caps rather than the headline.

The submarket around the building

The transit we publish for Chelsea is A/C/E, 1, F/M at 14th and 23rd, and that is the whole of what we will claim about the commute. Walk it from whichever line your team actually rides, because five minutes against twelve decides how people feel about the office in February.

Chelsea reads on our book as a gallery district turned tech corridor between the High Line and Midtown South, and the nine floors we hold there house teams of roughly 17 to 107 people who want a floor of their own rather than a numbered suite inside a tower.

If 3,500 square feet is wrong in either direction, the same walk holds alternatives: 104 West 27th Street's entire 9th floor at 7,047 square feet and $59, 127 West 26th Street's entire 7th at 9,500 and $50, and 275 Seventh Avenue's entire 24th at 18,668 and $63. Flatiron, Meatpacking and Hudson Yards sit adjacent, though our Hudson Yards book holds one floor asking $200, so it is no fallback from this price.

What a tour has to settle

That 3,500 figure is rentable, and rentable is a leasing convention rather than a measurement of your floor. Loss factors in New York commonly run 15 to 25%, which here would leave roughly 2,625 to 2,975 usable square feet and turn $55 rentable into somewhere between about $65 and $73 per usable foot. Ask how the floor was measured, then test it with a fit plan against the landlord's drawing rather than against the marketing number.

Treat the furniture package as a term rather than a gift. Get it scheduled in writing, piece by piece, and establish whether it sits inside the rent or under a separate license, who owns it at expiry, and what restoration you owe if you change the layout. The same discipline applies to the two additional rooms: two to three weeks is a promise until it is a work letter with a date, a specification and a line saying who pays.

Rent is also not occupancy cost. Electricity is billed on top and commonly adds $2 to $4 per square foot per year, about $583 to $1,167 a month on this footprint; cleaning may or may not be included; and tax and operating escalations will be there in some form, where the base year matters more than the percentage. Expect an annual step in base rent of 2.5 to 3%, and expect to negotiate the security amount and its form, a good guy guarantee, and a cap on that escalation.

How Nomad works on this building

We are tenant-side only. We do not represent this building's ownership, which is why the asking rent sits on this page in plain view instead of behind a form, and why our read on whether $55 is right for you can be unflattering to the listing.

Tours we can usually arrange inside the same week, and we will put this floor beside the other eight Chelsea options so the comparison is real. We have run 300+ office buildouts in New York, so when we tell you what those two extra rooms cost and how long they take, that is our own experience talking, not the landlord's brochure.