836 Broadway: Office Space for Lease

The one floor available, and what it holds

The building carries a single availability on our book, the whole second floor, 13,754 square feet taken as one block rather than carved into suites. At the 175 square feet per person we use for planning, which already absorbs meeting rooms, phone booths, a pantry and circulation, the floor seats roughly 79 people. A denser open plan pushes it toward 98, a layout weighted to private offices closer to 61.

• Entire 2nd Floor: 13,754 sq ft, approximately 79 desks at 175 sq ft per person, asking rent on request, floor plan and photography published.

We publish the floor plan and four interior photographs, enough to read the shape of the block and start a test fit. Where the columns fall, how deep the space runs from the windows, and what condition the floor is delivered in are tour questions.

What a full floor here should cost

No asking rent is published on the second floor, which on a block this size is worth explaining rather than apologizing for. A landlord holding an entire floor frequently prices to the tenant and the term instead of posting a number, and the taking rent on a deal this size gets negotiated anyway. What we can give you is the bracket: the three Union Square floors we represent ask $60 to $115 per square foot per year, median $88, about 17% above the $75 citywide median across our book.

That $88 deserves a caveat, because two small suites set it, 4,000 square feet at 900 Broadway asking $115 and 2,500 square feet at 29 West 17th Street asking $60. Small pre-built suites carry a per foot premium that full floors do not. The fair comparison is other full floors, and our book holds two, 13,266 square feet at 1700 Broadway in Midtown at $79 and 12,500 square feet at 1239 Broadway in NoMad at $62.

Run those against this floor and the monthly figure moves a lot. At $62 per square foot, 13,754 square feet costs about $71,100 a month; at $79, about $90,500. The $75 citywide median comes to roughly $86,000, the Union Square median of $88 to about $100,300. Our read is that a block this size settles in the lower middle of that spread, and a number at or above $88 prices a full floor like a boutique suite.

Union Square around the building

Transit is the reason tenants pay what they pay here. The 4/5/6, N/Q/R/W and L all land at 14th Street, the widest catchment below 42nd Street, which puts Brooklyn one stop away and every borough inside a forty minute door to door.

The tenant profile follows from that catchment more than from anything on the block. Union Square is small and tight, rarely with much on the market at once, and 13,754 square feet is the largest floor we carry here.

Also on our book nearby:

• 900 Broadway, Suite 202: 4,000 sq ft at $115 per sq ft, about $38,300 a month.
• 29 West 17th Street, Partial 7th Floor: 2,500 sq ft at $60 per sq ft, about $12,500 a month.

Flatiron, NoMad and Greenwich Village border the submarket, and NoMad is where the comparable full floors are.

How to evaluate this floor

A tour of a full floor should settle three things. What is being delivered, meaning the space as it stands, a clean shell, or a floor built to a plan you approve. How the block takes a layout, which the plan suggests and only the room confirms. What the base building gives you on HVAC, electrical capacity and bathrooms, since those decide most of a buildout budget.

The 13,754 square feet is a rentable number, and rentable is not usable. New York measures office space with a loss factor built in, so the area you furnish comes in below the area you pay on, commonly by 15-25%. That moves the desk count and breaks any comparison between two buildings quoting the same rent, so ask which measurement standard was used.

Asking rent is a starting number rather than an occupancy cost. Electricity usually bills on top, cleaning may or may not sit inside the base, and real estate tax and operating expense escalations will. An uncapped escalation across a ten year term quietly outruns whatever free rent was won at signing.

Below the rent line sit the terms that decide real cost. Free rent and a tenant improvement allowance move most on a block this size, and both are worth more on a longer term, which is why landlords trade them for years. Security is negotiable in amount and in form, and a letter of credit that burns down over the term costs far less than flat cash held for a decade. A good guy guarantee is standard here, and restoration obligations belong in writing at the start rather than argued at the end.

How Nomad works on 836 Broadway

We represent tenants and only tenants, so we hold no landlord mandate here and nothing in how we describe this floor is an argument for taking it. Rents go on the page wherever we have them, and where we do not, we say so plainly. We can arrange a tour, generally inside the week.

Because we run the buildout as well as the lease, having delivered 300+ office buildouts across 2M+ square feet in New York, the test fit and construction pricing can proceed while the lease is still in negotiation. That overlap is where the calendar is won.