Office Space for 20 People in Bryant Park

What the 175 square feet per person actually covers

The 3,500 square feet is a planning allowance rather than twenty desks measured out. A workstation takes a small fraction of 175 feet, and the rest goes to rooms and to area assigned to nobody in particular, which is why companies that size a floor by counting seats sign a lease and then discover they cannot hold a meeting.

• Meeting rooms take the largest share: one that seats the whole company, plus one or two for groups of four to six.
• Phone rooms, roughly one for every eight to ten people. An open floor fails on calls long before it fails on desks.
• A pantry with seating that doubles as the all-hands room, plus reception, storage, the IT closet and the circulation between all of it, every square foot billed at the desk rate.

The allowance moves in both directions. Private offices push a company past 175 quickly, shared desks and hybrid schedules pull it down, though rarely as far as the spreadsheet promises, because the rooms do not shrink when attendance does.

What twenty people cost here, and what they cost citywide

At $95 per square foot per year, 3,500 square feet runs $332,500 a year and about $27,708 a month, roughly $1,385 per person. The Bryant Park book as a whole shows a median of $96 across four floors asking $65 to $125, so the $95 on the one floor that fits twenty people sits almost exactly at the market we publish.

The same 3,500 square feet at the $75 median across the 49 floors we represent citywide would cost $252,000 a year and about $21,000 a month. Bryant Park charges roughly $80,500 more a year for identical footage, a 32% premium, and it buys the district rather than a better office.

Rent is not occupancy cost. Electric is usually billed on top at $2 to $4 per square foot, another $7,000 to $14,000 a year at this size, cleaning and after-hours HVAC sit outside the rent, and escalations run off a base year that deserves an argument. Free rent and an improvement allowance move the effective number further than another dollar off the face rate, particularly on a floor that is already built.

What a floor for twenty needs, and what rentable footage hides

Room count decides a 20-person floor, not desk count. Twenty people belong on one level and should hold out for it: one room that seats everybody, one or two for four to six, two or three phone booths, and a pantry with enough seating to be the social center, because at this headcount the pantry is the culture.

Every square footage quoted here is rentable, and rentable in New York folds in common area no tenant lays out. At the 15-25% loss factors common in the city, 3,500 rentable square feet leave 2,625 to 2,975 to plan on, and the honest allowance drops from 175 square feet a person to between 131 and 149. The same arithmetic turns $95 rentable into about $112 to $127 per usable foot.

Ask for the measurement basis in writing and for a test fit before anyone trades rent numbers. Twenty desks on a plan and twenty desks people can work at are different products sold at one price.

Growing into it, and growing back out

Half again this headcount is thirty people, which the same allowance puts at 5,250 square feet. Bryant Park holds nothing between 4,109 and 6,928 square feet today, so a company outgrowing a 23-desk floor here does not step up, it jumps, from about $32,530 a month to $60,000 or $72,167. Knowing that before signing is worth more than any concession in the lease.

The cheaper way to buy headroom is in the document rather than the rent. Direct deals at this size usually run five to seven years, because landlords amortize free rent and improvement money across a term, and a right of first offer on contiguous space costs a fraction of leasing 50% more feet you do not need yet. Where growth is genuinely unpredictable, a sublease runs shorter and cheaper and takes the space as it stands.

Plan the exit while you still have leverage: sublease and assignment rights with consent not to be unreasonably withheld, a good guy guarantee scoped so an orderly surrender stays available, and a restoration obligation read before you agree to build anything.

What is on our Bryant Park book at this size right now

One floor fits a 20-person team, and it is a good one.

• 1450 Broadway, entire 40th floor. 4,109 square feet at $95, about $32,530 a month, rated at 23 desks. Ownership describes it as high end built and furnished, a column free floor delivered with a mix of open area and office and conference space, with three sides of light, and reports an amenity floor on the building's 2nd level with a conference center, lounge and collaboration areas. A floor plan is on our file.

Twenty people on 4,109 square feet works out to 205 square feet each and about $1,627 a month per head, roughly $4,822 a month more than a purpose-sized 3,500 foot floor, near $57,900 a year. That is the price of three empty desks, and at a 23-desk rating those three are about one hiring quarter of headroom rather than a year of it.

The rest of the Bryant Park book sits well above this size: 7,500 square feet at $96 at 5 Bryant Park, furnished and listed as available through March 2028, 6,928 at $125 at 500 Fifth Avenue, and 17,296 at $65 at 1450 Broadway, all rated at 40 desks or more. Send us your headcount and the next four quarters of it, and we will test fit the 40th floor properly.