Bryant Park Office Space for Rent: The Buildings, the Rents and the Wait

Two kinds of building around the lawn

Bryant Park sits at Sixth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Street, with offices on every side. The avenue and 42nd Street carry the towers: trophy buildings and heavily renovated postwar ones, with large floors and park views from height. The side streets, 39th and 40th and the blocks running toward Fifth Avenue, carry prewar buildings whose upper floors face straight down the lawn.

In either kind the exposure is what you are paying for. A floor that faces the park and one that faces an airshaft can share an address, so we confirm the exact outlook of each floor before it goes on your shortlist. The Bryant Park guide describes the blocks.

What Bryant Park rents are, and what the park premium is for

The block below lists the Bryant Park floors on our book with their asking rents and the median. The figures carry a premium over the blocks around them, and the reason is the park: nine acres of lawn that no landlord can build as an amenity, used by the whole office at lunch and seen from the conference room.

Owners here treat the view as a product and hold the headline rent. What moves in a negotiation is the term, the escalations and the condition the floor is delivered in. Bryant Park vs Midtown shows how the pricing compares with the towers farther north.

Why companies rent here: a station under the park

Under the lawn itself is the station for the B/D/F/M, and a 7 train stop sits at the Fifth Avenue corner. Times Square is a block to the west and Grand Central, with Metro-North, a block to the east. Few addresses in the city work as well for a leadership team split between the suburbs and the boroughs.

That reach, and the view, explain the tenants: funds, law firms, media companies and professional-services firms whose visitors notice a lobby, along with companies that count the office as part of their recruiting pitch.

Six to eight weeks to a park-side desk, or four to six months

The schedule depends on the state of the floor.

• Prebuilt or furnished: the search, tours, proposals and lease take a few weeks, and the floor is usually ready two to four weeks after you sign. Six to eight weeks in all.
• Custom buildout: the same steps, then 10 to 16 weeks of construction. Four to six months in all.

Institutional owners around the park run a document-heavy process. It is slower than in the loft districts and more predictable. How long it takes to get an office lays out each phase.

How to start a Bryant Park search with Nomad

Three facts start it: the size of the team, the date the office has to be open, and the monthly figure you can spend. A broker reaches out within the hour during business hours, and a first shortlist can be ready within 24 hours, with the size and asking rent of every floor on it.

We tour the shortlist with you, usually in one afternoon, and keep an alternative alive throughout, usually a floor near Grand Central, two blocks east, where the lawn is traded for a lower number.