Chelsea vs Hudson Yards: Office Space Compared

The $144 gap, and what is actually being compared

Our nine Chelsea floors ask $44 to $64 per square foot per year, median $56. Hudson Yards holds one floor, the partial 53rd at 66 Hudson Boulevard, asking $200. That is $144 per foot between the two numbers, 72% cheaper looking down from Hudson Yards and a 257% premium looking up from Chelsea. Against the $75 citywide median across our 49 floors, Chelsea sits 25% under and Hudson Yards 167% over. The ranges do not come near each other: our dearest Chelsea ask is $64, which is $136 a foot below the only Hudson Yards number we can quote.

One floor is not a market, and we would rather say so than let a median do work it cannot do. Nine floors describe a submarket, with a range, a middle and enough spread to argue about. One floor describes one landlord's ask on one partial floor in one tower. Read $200 as a data point.

What would change that is more Hudson Yards inventory on our book, two or three floors at different sizes and conditions, which would turn a single number into a range you could price against. Until then the asymmetry runs deeper than the rent: we can describe the Chelsea floors one by one, and the Spiral floor carries no published description at all, so its condition, its layout and what ownership will fund are open questions for a tour rather than facts we can print.

What we hold in each, and which teams they house

Chelsea runs nine floors from 2,937 to 18,668 square feet, roughly 17 to 107 desks at the 175 square feet per person we plan against. Hudson Yards is one floor at 10,517 square feet, about 60 desks. Read those together and most of the comparison resolves itself: a team under 55 people or over 65 has nothing to tour in Hudson Yards today, and has options at both ends in Chelsea.

Matched footprints make the gap concrete. The closest Chelsea floors by size are 127 West 26th Street's entire 7th at 9,500 square feet and $50, about $39,583 a month, and 151 West 26th Street's partial 10th at 9,000 and $64, about $48,000. The Spiral floor is about $175,283 a month. Same team, same amount of space, $127,000 to $136,000 more a month, which is $1.5 to $1.6 million a year.

The top of the Chelsea book sharpens it further. 275 Seventh Avenue's entire 24th floor is 18,668 square feet at $63, about $98,007 a month, seating roughly 107 people. It is 78% larger than the Hudson Yards floor and about $77,000 a month cheaper. Per seat that is roughly $916 against $2,921.

Getting there, and getting your people there

We publish A/C/E, 1, F/M at 14th and 23rd for Chelsea, and 7 at 34th Street Hudson Yards, A/C/E and LIRR at Penn for Hudson Yards. That is the whole of what we will claim about either commute, and it is worth walking both from the line your team actually rides.

One structural difference sits in those strings. Commuter rail appears on the Hudson Yards side and not on the Chelsea one, so a company hiring off the Long Island Rail Road deletes a leg for part of its staff by going west, for the length of the term. Hudson Yards is a recently built district over the West Side rail yards with the 7 train landing inside it, which also means the walk in from most of Manhattan is longer than a map suggests.

Beyond that the two sit adjacent, near neighbors on our own map, so for most people this is a few blocks rather than a different commute. Plot your team's home zip codes against both before letting the transit argument decide anything.

Where we come down, by tenant type

We take a position: almost every team that tours both should sign in Chelsea, and we say that knowing it prices our own fee lower.

• Software, design and media teams of 17 to 107 people: Chelsea. Nine floors cover your next two moves, and $144 a foot belongs in headcount rather than in a lobby.
• A firm of roughly 60 whose clients, investors and candidates come to them, that wants a high floor in the newest office district in Manhattan: Hudson Yards is defensible at about $2,921 a desk a month. Be able to say out loud what the address earns.
• Anyone needing fewer than 55 desks or more than 65: Chelsea by elimination, because we hold nothing else in Hudson Yards today.

The case for paying more is real and we make it when it fits. An office where mandates get signed is a sales expense wearing a real estate label. That reasoning collapses when nobody visits, and at nearly three times the rent per seat it has to be argued rather than assumed.

How to settle it in one afternoon

Both are tourable the same day, and since we hold floors in each the schedule is ours to build rather than beg for. Book them in one block rather than a week apart, because memory flatters whichever floor you saw last.

Bring the headcount you expect 36 months out, since size eliminates one of these submarkets faster than price does. Put the same written questions to both landlords: how the floor was measured and what the loss factor is, whether electric and cleaning sit inside the rent, how much free rent and improvement allowance are on the table, what the escalation compounds against, and what security and good guy guarantee they expect. On the Spiral floor, add condition, delivery date and what ownership will fund, because none of that is published.

We represent tenants only, never landlords. Send the headcount and the target occupancy date and we will build the afternoon.