Office Space for 100 People in Chelsea

Why 175 square feet a head holds at this size

The 175 is not a measurement of a desk. A workstation and its chair take a small share of it, and the rest goes to conference rooms, phone rooms, reception, the pantry, storage and circulation. The allowance holds at a hundred people because the shared rooms have stopped outrunning headcount: a twenty-person company pays for a conference room that a hundred-person company also pays for, spread across five times the heads. From about fifty people up the ratio flattens, and 175 is where it settles.

Plan above it when leadership expects private offices, when clients come through often enough to need a real reception, or when the work carries rooms that lock. Plan below it when attendance is genuinely staggered and desks are booked rather than owned. Hold at 175 otherwise; it is the standard behind the desk count on every Chelsea floor we list. Run the alternative before you tour, because the money in it is real: a hundred people planned at 150 feet each fit in 15,000, and the 2,500 feet that saves are worth about $148,750 a year at the $59.50 midpoint of the two floors that fit.

What a hundred desks cost here, and against the city

The two floors that fit ask $56 and $63, a midpoint of $59.50 we publish as $60. On 17,500 square feet that is $1,041,250 a year, about $86,771 a month, roughly $868 per desk. At the $75 citywide median across our book the same footprint runs $1,312,500 a year, about $109,375 a month, so Chelsea saves about $271,250 a year, a little over $22,000 a month, roughly 20.7%. Across all nine floors we represent in Chelsea the median is $56 in a band of $44 to $64, and the cheap end of that band is small floors, which a hundred-person requirement never gets to shop.

Rent is not the whole outflow. Electric typically adds $2 to $4 per square foot per year, $35,000 to $70,000 on this footprint, before cleaning, after-hours HVAC and annual escalations. Free rent, the improvement allowance and an escalation cap move the effective number further than arguing the headline ever does. Asking rent opens the conversation and rarely ends it, and a fixed 3% escalation, the standard landlord ask, quietly adds about $31,238 to year two on the $1,041,250 base and compounds every year after.

What the floor has to hold, and the feet you never occupy

A hundred people need one room that seats leadership plus visitors, and three or four more for the meetings a company this size generates all day. We plan a phone room for every twelve to fifteen people, so seven or eight, and a pantry big enough to hold an all-hands, which is where the architect checks the place of assembly filing New York triggers at seventy-five people. Order the test fit before signing, not after; it decides whether the plate takes your rooms or fights them.

Then subtract. The 17,500 is rentable square feet, and nobody sits in rentable feet. At the 15% to 25% loss factors ordinary in this stock, 17,500 rentable leaves 14,875 to 13,125 usable, which is 149 to 131 square feet a person rather than 175. Ask for the loss factor in writing, since two floors quoted at the same rentable size can differ by a thousand usable feet. Between 14,875 and 13,125 sits 1,750 feet, ten people of program at the allowance we plan against, and that is the difference between a floor that works on day one and a floor that gets edited.

A hundred and fifty people, and the lease that survives them

A hundred becomes a hundred and fifty faster than the hiring plan admits, and 150 at the same allowance is 26,250 square feet, $1,561,875 a year, about $130,156 a month at $59.50. In Chelsea it is also a different search, because the largest floor on our book here is 18,668 square feet: 150 people means two floors, with the second pantry and front door that implies, or a move out of the submarket. These four rights cost nothing at signature and cannot be bought back later.

• Term. Seven to ten years buys a real improvement allowance and free rent, and a hundred-person fit-out needs both. Five years keeps flexibility and gives up both.
• Expansion. A right of first offer on contiguous space is granted far more readily than a fixed-price option. Ask which floors in the building roll during your term.
• Sublease. Consent not to be unreasonably withheld, affiliate transfers carved out, and the split of any sublease profit settled now rather than when you need it.
• Security. A letter of credit scaled to the landlord's money in the space, plus a good guy guarantee, with a burn-down after two clean years.

What is on our book right now at this size in Chelsea

151 West 26th Street [12th Floor Penthouse] is the closer fit: 17,610 square feet at $56, $986,160 a year and about $82,180 a month, 110 feet over the model footprint and roughly 25% below our citywide median. Our planning number reads it as 101 desks, 126 on dense benching and 78 with private offices, with a conference room and pantry already there. Our listing copy calls it loft-style, near dining, fitness and retail, close to Madison Square Park and Penn Station.

275 Seventh Avenue [Entire 24th Floor] is 18,668 square feet at $63, $1,176,084 a year and about $98,007 a month, $12 under our citywide median. At a hundred people that is 187 square feet a head, headroom to hire into, though the record lists no amenities in place, so meeting rooms and a pantry belong in the buildout budget. Both floors are on the A/C/E, 1, F/M at 14th and 23rd, and they sit $15,827 a month apart, $189,924 a year. Before you choose between them, get the loss factor, the improvement allowance and the free rent from both landlords in the same week, because at this size those three settle the comparison and the face rents only start it. Plates this size trade quietly, so tell us your keys date and we will run the wider market against these two.