NoMad vs Grand Central: Office Space Compared

Nineteen dollars a foot, and where it goes

The medians across the floors we hold are $62 in NoMad and $81 in Grand Central, $19 on every rentable foot. That is a 23% discount coming down Broadway, or a 31% premium going up to 42nd Street. On the 6,000 square foot NoMad floor at 22 West 27th Street, $19 is $114,000 a year, close to $800,000 across a seven-year term before escalations.

The ranges overlap only at the top, $57 to $90 against $72 to $89, with the three NoMad loft floors sitting clear beneath both Grand Central floors and the Empire State Building's partial 43rd asking more than either. Most of the premium is the terminal and the law, finance and consulting tenancy around it, set against wholesale-district prewar stock where Madison Square Park does the work an address does uptown. The rest is measurement: all three NoMad floors are entire, both Grand Central floors partial, so the rentable number quoted on the east side carries your share of corridor and core. Compare usable feet and the gap widens.

The floors we hold, and who they can seat

NoMad gives you three floors between 6,000 and 12,500 square feet, roughly 34 to 71 desks at the 175 square feet per person we plan to, each of them a full floor. Grand Central gives you two, 5,230 and 5,772 square feet, about 30 to 33 desks, both partial. The Empire State Building's partial 43rd, 5,621 square feet and about 32 desks, is the one NoMad floor that lands inside the Grand Central band, so the two books touch at the seam and separate above it.

• Up to 33 desks: two Grand Central floors near enough in size to be one offer twice, plus the Empire State Building's partial 43rd in NoMad at about 32.
• 34 to 71 desks: NoMad only, across three full floors.
• Above 71 desks: neither, and we would move you to a different submarket.

That constraint decides more searches than price does. A 25-person company has no NoMad option, a 50-person company has no Grand Central one, and only at the seam is there a real choice. The Partial 13th Floor at 60 East 42nd Street, 5,772 square feet at $72, runs about $34,632 a month, while one desk further on the Entire 7th Floor at 22 West 27th Street gives 6,000 square feet at $57 for about $28,500. Larger floor, $6,132 less a month, roughly $73,500 across the year.

Two transit maps, two hiring pools

NoMad has N/R/W, 6, F/M at 23rd and 28th. Grand Central has 4/5/6, 7, S, Metro-North. Inside the five boroughs those sets do close to the same job, and the 6 puts the terminal about ten minutes from a NoMad desk. Metro-North has no substitute, bringing Westchester and Connecticut inside forty minutes.

Hiring is where the geography cuts. NoMad sits at the head of the Broadway corridor beside Flatiron, Murray Hill and Chelsea, where much of early-career New York already works; the terminal heads the suburban rail network, where partners and clients come from. Map where your next twenty hires will live before you tour, because a commute nobody wants surfaces two years later as attrition rather than as a complaint.

Our position, tenant by tenant

Most companies who put this to us end up in NoMad, and we would rather say so than balance the two. A product, engineering or design team of 34 to 71 people gets a whole floor at 23% less rent, an office its staff reaches without a transfer, and the entry, the pantry and the meeting rooms placed where the work wants them.

Grand Central earns its premium in two situations, and we would tell those clients to pay it. A professional services firm whose clients arrive by train and walk the last few blocks is buying commercial work a Broadway loft cannot perform. And where four or five senior people ride Metro-North daily, the spread on a 5,772 square foot floor runs roughly $110,000 a year against a second leg on those commutes twice a day. Pay more whenever the rent difference is smaller than the time it buys back.

The one call we would talk a client out of is buying the address while the whole staff commutes in from Brooklyn and Queens.

Walk both in one afternoon

The two are a short ride apart on the 6 and we hold floors in each, so all five fit into a single afternoon. We start at Grand Central, at the hour your team would actually arrive, then come down Broadway to see what the same check buys on a floor nobody shares.

Ask the same questions at every stop: how the floor was measured and against what loss factor, whether electric is submetered, direct or included, who carries cleaning, and what improvement allowance and free rent sit behind the asking number. Asking rent is where a negotiation opens and taking rent is where it closes. Send us the head count and the term and we will build the loop around floors that fit.