Office Space for Rent in Union Square: Is It the Right Base for a Growing Company?

What is available around the square

Not much at any moment, and that is the first thing to plan for. Union Square is a boutique market covering a few blocks from 14th to 17th Street, where Broadway meets Fourth Avenue, and floors there are few and lease fast. The block below shows our current ones with their sizes and asking rents.

We run a Union Square search as an opportunistic one. You decide ahead of time what size, rent and term would make you move, and when a floor that matches appears, you tour it that week.

Is it a good location for a company that is hiring?

On commute alone it is hard to beat below 42nd Street. The junction at 14th Street carries the 4/5/6 and the N/Q/R/W in the same station as the L, which is the line that makes Union Square the easiest Manhattan office address to reach from Brooklyn. PATH is close by for New Jersey.

Our guide calls the result a hiring radius: every line through the station brings in a set of neighborhoods whose residents can be at your door in under 40 minutes. A company recruiting graduates from NYU next door, engineers across the river and senior people from the suburbs shortens all of those trips at once. The Union Square guide makes the full case.

The kinds of space that come up at Union Square

• Floors in renovated prewar buildings on the square itself, where the address is part of the appeal.
• Loft floors on the side streets running toward Broadway, Gramercy and the Village.
• Furnished subleases from companies that moved on, usually with a shorter term remaining.
• Now and then a full floor large enough for a much bigger team.

The stock leans toward smaller teams in well-finished rooms. A company that needs a long open floor for engineers more often finds it a few blocks north.

What to compare between two Union Square floors

• The walk to the station entrance, since the commute is why you are here.
• Park frontage against a side street: the first carries the address, the second usually the lower rent.
• How the floor is delivered: furnished, prebuilt or needing work.
• Direct lease or sublease, and if a sublease, how long the original lease still runs.
• The whole offer, not the face rent. Landlords at the square hold the printed number and give on term, escalations and buildout.

We put both floors through a test fit and price them over the full term before you choose.

The neighbor to tour on the same day: Flatiron

Flatiron begins where Union Square ends and shares most of its trains. It has more floors, a wider range of sizes and prices, and the same kind of building. Touring it alongside gives you a fallback if the square has nothing at your size, and a comparison to negotiate with if it does. Flatiron vs Union Square sets the two side by side with current figures.