Office Space for 20 People in Penn Plaza

What the 175 square feet per person is actually buying

The 3,500 square feet comes out of a planning allowance rather than a measurement of twenty desks. A workstation takes a small fraction of 175 feet, and the rest goes into rooms and area assigned to nobody in particular, which is why teams that size a floor by counting seats come in short.

• Meeting rooms take the largest bite: one seating most of the company, plus one or two for groups of four to six.
• Phone rooms, roughly one per eight to ten people. Open floors fail on calls long before they fail on seats.
• A pantry with seating that doubles as the all-hands space, plus reception, storage, the IT closet and the circulation between them, all of it billed at the desk rate.

The allowance moves both ways. Private offices push a company past 175 quickly, and desk sharing pulls it down, rarely as far as the spreadsheet promises.

What 20 people cost here, and what they cost citywide

The $52 median is the middle of three floors, two of them stacked at 213 West 35th Street and the third a tower floor at 2 Penn Plaza asking $135, so read it as arithmetic rather than evidence about the district. On that basis 3,500 square feet costs $182,000 a year and $15,167 a month, about $758 per person.

The same footprint at the $75 median across everything we represent in New York costs $252,000 a year and $21,000 a month, so Penn Plaza saves roughly $70,000 a year on identical feet. That 28% discount is honest: against the SoHo and Flatiron floors on our own book at $85 to $115, what a team gives up is address and finish level, not access.

Rent is not occupancy cost. Electric is billed on top at $2 to $4 per square foot, another $7,000 to $14,000 here, and free rent and an improvement allowance move the effective number further than a dollar off the face rate does.

What a floor for 20 needs, and what rentable feet hide

Every figure quoted here is rentable, and rentable in New York folds in a share of lobbies, corridors and mechanical space no tenant lays out. Loss factors commonly run 15-25%, so 3,500 rentable feet leave 2,625 to 2,975 to plan on, and the honest allowance falls from 175 per person to between 131 and 149. On the 5,250 foot 10th floor that is roughly 3,938 to 4,463 usable, turning $50 rentable into $59 to $67 per usable foot.

Room count decides the floor, not desk count. Twenty people belong on one level and should hold out for it: one room for the full company, one or two for four to six, two or three phone booths, a pantry with seating. The 11th is listed with a conference room and furniture; the 10th carries no amenities on our record, which usually means a floor offered closer to as-is. Neither has a plan on file, so ask for the drawing and run a test fit.

Growing into it, and growing back out of it

Half again this headcount is 30 people, and the same allowance calls for 5,250 square feet, which is the 10th floor to the foot. Our Penn Plaza floors are sized for 30 and 35, not for 20. A team of 20 on the 10th carries 262 feet a head at $21,875 a month, about $1,094 per person against the $758 a fitted 3,500 feet would cost, a premium near $80,500 a year.

We would rather buy that headroom in the lease than in the rent. Direct deals at this size run five to seven years, since landlords amortize free rent and improvement money across the term, and a right of first offer on contiguous space costs far less than leasing 50% more feet today. A sublease runs shorter and cheaper with the space as it stands.

Push for sublease and assignment rights with consent not to be unreasonably withheld, and scope the good guy guarantee so an orderly exit stays available.

What is on our book at this size in Penn Plaza right now

Two floors stacked in the same garment-district loft building two blocks from Penn Station and Moynihan, both larger than a 20-person footprint, both on the transit that brings teams here: 1/2/3, A/C/E, LIRR and NJ Transit. The third Penn Plaza floor on our book, the partial 17th at 2 Penn Plaza, is 5,070 square feet at $135, a tower rate a twenty-person team has no reason to pay in this submarket.

• 213 West 35th Street, 10th Floor. 5,250 square feet at $50, about $21,875 a month, rated at 30 desks. Twenty people would sit at 262 feet each, roughly $1,094 a head. No amenities are listed and no plan is on file, which points to a floor negotiated with a work letter.
• 213 West 35th Street, 11th Floor. 6,100 square feet at $52, about $26,433 a month, rated at 35 desks, listed with a terrace, a conference room and furniture, and we hold a walkthrough tour. Twenty people would sit at 305 feet each, about $1,322 a head.

The 11th closes the space question for two hiring cycles; the 10th is cheaper and the better candidate for subletting what nobody uses yet. Ask what the furniture covers, whether the terrace falls inside the measured area, and what HVAC costs after hours. Send us the hiring plan and we will test fit both.