FiDi vs Penn Plaza: Office Space Compared

The $21 gap, and what sits inside it

The whole of the difference is $21 on every square foot. FiDi's median asking rent is $72 per square foot per year against $51 in Penn Plaza, and against the $75 citywide median across our book, FiDi sits a few dollars under while Penn Plaza sits roughly a third below. On a 6,000 square foot floor that gap is $126,000 a year, about $10,500 a month, and $630,000 across a five year term before a single escalation.

Where the gap comes from is stock rather than geography. Our four downtown floors ask $60, $64, $79 and $115 across four separate buildings, and the top of that range at 4 World Trade Center prices at more than double the two loft floors we hold near Penn Station. Both Penn Plaza floors ask $50 and $52 inside one garment-era loft building on a West 30s side street, the stock that district is built on. Line the books up and the cheapest FiDi floor sits $8 above the dearer of those loft floors and $75 below 2 Penn Plaza's partial 17th at $135, which is to say the gap between the medians describes no pairing you could actually sign.

What we hold in each, and who fits

Inventory settles this comparison more often than rent does, and the two books look nothing alike.

• 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, all partial floors, each in a different building.
• Penn Plaza: 2 floors, 5,250 and 6,100 square feet, roughly 30 to 35 desks, both at 213 West 35th Street, the 10th and the 11th.
• The break points: under about 30 desks only FiDi fits without paying for space you will not use, 30 to 35 desks is the single band where both books answer, and 35 to 40 desks is FiDi again.

Past 40 desks neither book has a one-floor answer, with one exception. The two Penn Plaza floors sit directly on top of each other, so a team of about 65 can ask about taking both, roughly 11,350 square feet under a single landlord. Whether that is available, and whether the floors can be joined internally, is a tour question.

Getting there, and getting your people there

The lines as they stand: FiDi is 4/5, 2/3, R/W, 1, J/Z at Fulton and Wall, plus PATH at the WTC Oculus. Penn Plaza is 1/2/3, A/C/E, LIRR and NJ Transit, with Moynihan Train Hall at the center.

Those two lists solve different problems. Penn Plaza is the regional answer and it is not close, because LIRR and NJ Transit put a Long Island or New Jersey employee at a desk without a transfer, which matters more to a firm whose senior people left the city years ago than any amount of subway density. FiDi's strength is volume of trains rather than reach, and it reads easily to anyone coming from Brooklyn. Map where your staff live and where the next ten hires come from before signing either lease, because a commute that adds a transfer for half the team costs more in quiet attrition than the rent line shows.

Our recommendation, by tenant type

We would not send the same company to both.

• A 15 to 30 person team paying its own way belongs in FiDi, because Penn Plaza has nothing under 5,070 square feet. The partial 12th at 45 Broadway, 2,624 square feet at $60, runs about $13,120 a month.
• A 30 to 35 person team whose mandate is cost discipline should take Penn Plaza and stop looking. The 10th floor at 213 West 35th, 5,250 square feet at $50, is about $21,875 a month against roughly $43,500 for 17 State Street's 6,606 square feet, close to double for a floor a quarter larger.
• A client-facing firm, or one whose recruiting pitch leans on where it sits, should pay for FiDi and treat the premium as the point.

That last case deserves the honest arithmetic. The partial 44th at 4 World Trade Center, 5,023 square feet at $115, runs about $48,100 a month against about $26,430 for the 6,100 square foot floor in Penn Plaza, roughly $260,000 a year more for less space. If the address wins one mandate a year, or two senior hires who would otherwise have gone elsewhere, it pays for itself. Otherwise a cost-led team taking a tower floor downtown because the address sounds good is the one decision we would argue a client out of.

How to settle it in one afternoon

Both submarkets sit on the 1, so one train ride connects them and six floors fit into a single afternoon, the four downtown ones close enough to walk between. Bring a headcount and a rough room count rather than a square footage target, and ask us for the concession package on each floor rather than the asking rent, since free rent, buildout allowance, escalations and the treatment of electric and cleaning decide what you actually pay. Six to nine months from first tour to move-in is realistic for a built space, less on a sublease. We represent tenants only, and we hold floors in both.