Office Space for 100 People in Union Square

Where the 17,500 feet go

The 17,500 is a planning allowance rather than a furniture order, and the desks are the smaller half of it. A hundred benched workstations and their aisles take roughly 6,000 to 6,500 usable feet, and the boardroom, the mid-sized rooms, ten or twelve phone rooms, a pantry feeding a hundred people in two shifts, reception and storage come out of what is left.

Density is a decision, not a constant, and 836 Broadway's own rating shows the range: the same 13,754 feet hold 79 desks at 175 per person, 98 in a dense open plan, and 61 once private offices line the perimeter.

• Benched and shared, about 140 feet a head: 14,000 square feet.
• The 175-foot allowance, 17,500 feet: the full room program on a floor that still breathes.
• Private offices, about 225 feet a head: 22,500 feet.

What a hundred people cost at 14th Street

The one floor at this scale quotes rent on request, so the anchor is the Union Square median of $87.50, the midpoint of the only two published rents we carry here, $60 at 29 West 17th Street and $115 at 900 Broadway.

Run the allowance against it and 17,500 square feet models at $1,531,250 a year, $127,604 a month, $1,276 a head. The same footprint at $75, the median across our current New York availability, costs $1,312,500 a year and $109,375 a month, $1,094 a head. A hundred people at 14th Street pay about $218,750 a year over the citywide midpoint, roughly 17%, and the premium buys the widest transit catchment below 42nd Street.

You rent the floor, not the allowance. At $87.50 the 13,754 feet model to $1,203,475 a year and $100,290 a month, $1,003 per person, lower per head only because each head gets less room. Electricity is billed on top at $2 to $4 per square foot, another $27,508 to $55,016, and a 3% escalation compounding on the allowance carries year one to just under $2,000,000 by year ten.

What a floor for a hundred has to hold

Every foot quoted in New York is rentable, carrying its share of lobby, corridor and mechanical space. Usable lands 15-25% below, so 17,500 rentable becomes 13,125 to 14,875 drawable feet, 131 to 149 per person, and at $87.50 that gap is $229,688 to $382,813 a year of rent on area no furniture sits on.

Rooms follow concurrency rather than headcount. A hundred people want eight to ten rooms at once: one seating sixteen to twenty, two for eight to ten, four or five for four to six, and a phone room per eight to ten people. The all-hands fits none of them, so the open plan doubles as the assembly space, and a room drawn for seventy-five or more is filed as a place of assembly.

836 Broadway is the entire second floor, so a hundred people stay on one plate rather than splitting into two companies over two levels. At 13,754 feet that is 138 rentable feet a head and 103 to 117 usable, which means benching, a disciplined room count and no perimeter offices. Pay for a test fit before the letter of intent.

A hundred and fifty people, and the clauses that get you there

Half again this headcount is 150 people and 26,250 square feet, and Union Square does not have it: our book here runs 2,500 to 13,754 feet across three floors, and the nearest comparable floors sit outside the submarket, 12,500 feet at $62 in NoMad and 13,266 at $79 in Midtown, neither of them a size class up.

So buy the growth in the lease instead of in square feet. A direct deal this size with a custom fit-out runs seven to ten years, because the landlord amortizes free rent, the improvement allowance and brokerage across the term. Ask early whether the landlord controls anything else in the building, and put a right of first offer on it with a fixed response window.

Then write the exits. Renewal at fair market with a collar, an expansion option priced by formula rather than by the words fair market alone, sublease consent not unreasonably withheld with profit split rather than surrendered, and a one-time termination right in year five at a defined fee. Keep the letter of credit burning down on milestones behind a good guy guarantee.

What Union Square has for a hundred people right now

• 836 Broadway, entire second floor. 13,754 square feet, 79 desks at the allowance and 98 dense, rent quoted on request, with four photographs and a floor plan on the listing. Across a hundred people that is 138 rentable feet a head.
• Nothing else here is within range. 900 Broadway [Suite 202] is 4,000 feet at $115, about 23 desks, with a pantry and a conference room. 29 West 17th Street [Partial 7th Floor] is 2,500 at $60, about 14 desks, furnished and plug and play on a sublease through September 2027.

A hundred people either take the 836 floor and run it dense, or search Flatiron, NoMad and Greenwich Village alongside. Well-priced floors go in weeks in a submarket this small.