FiDi vs Hudson Yards: Office Space Compared

The $128 gap, and how much of it is real

FiDi's median across the four floors we hold there is $71.50, which this page rounds to $72, and the Hudson Yards median is its only floor at $200. That is $128 a foot, FiDi about 64% below or Hudson Yards asking about 180% more for the same square foot. Against the $75 median across the 46 priced floors on our book, FiDi sits a few dollars under the number while 66 Hudson Boulevard sits about 167% above it, the most expensive floor we represent anywhere. Next dearest is 2 Penn Plaza at $135.

The comparison is thin on one side and we would rather say so than dress it up. Four floors against one is a submarket measured against a quote, and a single listing's median moves the moment a second arrives: two more Hudson Yards floors at $150 would cut it by a quarter and make the 64% on this page wrong. Depth across more than one building at more than one rent is what would fix that.

What is real in the gap is product. Three of the four FiDi floors reach us described as prebuilts inside existing downtown buildings, finished by an owner and ready to occupy. 66 Hudson Boulevard is The Spiral, a high floor in a recently built tower over the West Side rail yards, in a district served by the 7. The premium buys new construction and a new address, expensive but a legitimate thing to want.

Four floors against one, and who each can house

Availability settles more searches than price, and these books are different shapes.

• FiDi: 4 floors, 2,624 to 6,997 square feet, roughly 15 to 40 desks at the 175 square feet per person we plan around, $60 to $115.
• Hudson Yards: 1 floor, 10,517 square feet, about 60 desks, $200.

Size decides this for a large team before rent comes up. Nothing we hold in FiDi reaches 10,517 square feet, the largest being 32 Old Slip's partial 32nd at 6,997 and roughly 40 desks. Sixty people cannot be seated on one FiDi floor from our current list, so the honest answer for that company is that we would go find more downtown stock rather than send them to $200 a foot.

Under forty desks, FiDi is deep for its size band. 45 Broadway's partial 12th, 2,624 square feet at $60, about $13,120 a month, a prebuilt with three offices, a conference room and a pantry. 32 Old Slip's partial 32nd, 6,997 at $64, about $37,317 a month, furnished and wired for move-in. 17 State Street's partial 26th, 6,606 at $79, about $43,490 a month, a new prebuilt with harbor views and a tenant amenity center. 4 World Trade Center's partial 44th, 5,023 at $115, about $48,137 a month, a partially furnished prebuilt with five offices and two conference rooms.

Getting there and getting people there

FiDi is served by the 4/5, 2/3, R/W, 1 and J/Z at Fulton and Wall, plus PATH at the WTC Oculus. Hudson Yards has the 7 at 34th Street Hudson Yards, with the A/C/E and LIRR at Penn.

The asymmetry is the point. FiDi's list converges from more directions than almost anywhere we represent, and PATH is the argument you make to a candidate living in New Jersey. Hudson Yards has one subway line of its own and a walk east to Penn for everything else, pleasant in October and a subject of complaint in January. Send someone to make that walk before you sign at $200.

The 1 reaches both, Penn Station a walk east of the Hudson Yards floor and Rector Street in the middle of our downtown list, which is the quiet reason these two fit inside one search.

Our recommendation by tenant type

With rent binding under forty desks, take FiDi, and it is not close. At the 175 square feet per person we plan around, a desk costs about $10,500 a year on a $60 floor and about $35,000 at $200. Seat forty people on the Hudson Yards floor and it worsens: 10,517 square feet across forty is 263 square feet a head, roughly $52,600 per person per year for room nobody uses yet.

The case for spending more downtown is one we make often, and 4 World Trade Center is where we make it. A team of 25 to 30 that needs the space to look like the company gets a finished high floor with floor-to-ceiling windows and Oculus access at $115 a foot, $48,137 a month against $175,283. That $127,146 a month funds a lot of hiring.

Hudson Yards genuinely suits a company of about sixty that wants one floor in new construction, whose clients or recruits are won partly on the building, and which can commit to 10,517 square feet without a sublet plan alongside the lease. It suits nobody who will be a different size in eighteen months, and nobody under forty desks. We say so with the floor on our own book.

The practical next step

Both can be toured in a day and we hold floors in each, so none of this needs settling on a spreadsheet. A downtown prebuilt followed by a high floor on the far West Side usually ends the argument.

We hold no description for the Hudson Yards floor, so the tour matters more here than usual: ask what condition it is delivered in and what the landlord will fund, since at $200 the answer to built or raw moves the real number further than anything on this page. Ask for usable square footage beside the rentable figure, because a 20% loss factor turns $200 into $250 per usable foot and $64 into $80.

Then judge the two on taking rent rather than asking rent, because free months, improvement allowance and the escalation base year move a deal further than a headline does.