FiDi vs Grand Central: Office Space Compared

The $9 gap and what actually drives it

The medians are $72 per square foot per year in FiDi and $81 in Grand Central, a $9 difference that makes FiDi roughly 11% cheaper. Against the $75 citywide median across our book, FiDi sits about 4% under it and Grand Central about 8% high. On a 5,000 square foot floor that $9 comes to about $45,000 a year, or $225,000 across a five year term before escalations.

What the medians hide is two very different distributions. FiDi spans $60 to $115 across four floors, a $55 spread; Grand Central runs $72 to $89 across two, a spread of $17. Both 45 Broadway at $60 and 32 Old Slip at $64 price below anything currently available at the terminal, while 4 World Trade Center at $115 prices above everything in it. FiDi is not uniformly cheaper, it offers a far wider menu. Compare floor to floor, never median to median.

What each book can actually hold

Four floors downtown, two at the terminal, and the size bands barely overlap. FiDi runs 2,624 to 6,997 square feet, roughly 15 to 40 desks at the 175 square feet per person we plan against. Grand Central runs 5,230 to 5,772 square feet, a band 542 square feet wide, covering 30 to 33 people and nobody on either side of it. A team of 18, or a team of 40, has one option between these two submarkets today.

The head to head that makes the point:

• 32 Old Slip, 6,997 sq ft at $64 in FiDi, runs about $37,300 a month.
• 825 Third Avenue, 5,230 sq ft at $89 in Grand Central, runs about $38,800 a month.
• Downtown buys 1,767 more square feet, roughly ten more desks, for $1,500 less every month.

At the small end, 45 Broadway at 2,624 square feet and $60 works out to about $13,120 a month, the only floor across both submarkets a fifteen person team carries comfortably. And 60 East 42nd Street at $72 prices exactly at the FiDi median.

Getting there, and getting your people there

FiDi runs 4/5, 2/3, R/W, 1, J/Z at Fulton and Wall, plus PATH at the WTC Oculus. Grand Central runs 4/5/6, 7, S, Metro-North. The 4/5 serves both, which is why these two tour in one afternoon on a single train.

Metro-North is the thing downtown cannot answer at any rent. When founders or a real share of staff come in from Westchester or Connecticut, the terminal puts them at a desk straight off the platform, and every alternative tends to add twenty minutes at each end of the day. Multiply that across a headcount over five years and $9 per square foot stops being the important variable.

Downtown answers a different map, with PATH covering the New Jersey half of a roster and the lines at Fulton and Wall bringing most of Brooklyn in without a transfer. Map your team's home zip codes before anyone argues about rent.

Our recommendation, by tenant type

We represent tenants only, so we have no reason to steer you either way. Here is where we land.

• Under 30 people: FiDi, without argument. Grand Central holds nothing that size in our book, and 45 Broadway at $60 is the cheapest entry across both.
• Thirty to thirty-three, growth flat, partners or clients arriving by train: Grand Central, and pay the premium.
• Thirty-plus and growing quickly: FiDi. The 6,997 square foot floor at 32 Old Slip exists today, and the downtown range is wide enough that your next move needs no new address.
• Presentation as a real budget line: FiDi, since 4 World Trade Center at $115 tops both books.

The expensive recommendation deserves arithmetic rather than a shrug. Taking 825 Third Avenue at $89 instead of a FiDi floor at the $72 median costs about $17.50 per square foot, roughly $91,500 a year on 5,230 square feet, or about $3,000 per person across a thirty person team. For a firm whose partners bill by the hour and whose clients step off a train, $3,000 a head to delete a daily transfer is defensible. For a venture backed company whose engineers live in Brooklyn, the same $3,000 buys nothing anyone notices.

How to settle this in one afternoon

We hold floors in both submarkets, so the comparison fits a single tour. Start at Grand Central, where two floors resolve the question quickly, then take the 4 or 5 downtown and walk the FiDi range from 45 Broadway at $60 to 4 World Trade Center at $115.

Carry two questions. Ask the loss factor on each floor, because a 5,772 square foot rentable floor and a 6,997 square foot rentable floor deliver very different usable space. Then ask what sits behind the ask: free rent, tenant improvement allowance, escalation structure, how electric and cleaning are billed. Over five years the concession package routinely moves the effective number by more than that $9.

Send us your headcount and your target occupancy date and we will build the tour around the floors that genuinely fit.