Office Space for 30 People in FiDi

Where the 175 square feet per person goes

The 5,250 square feet is a planning allowance, not a desk measurement. A workstation takes under a third of it, and the rest goes to rooms and to area nobody is assigned to.

• Enclosed meeting space: one room seating twelve to sixteen, plus two or three rooms for four to six. The largest claim on any plate after the desks.
• Phone rooms at one per eight to ten people, so three or four here. Open floors fail on calls before they fail on seats.
• A pantry with seating that carries the all-hands, plus reception, storage and circulation.

Private offices push a team above 175, and genuine desk sharing pulls it down. The allowance holds steadier at 30 than at 10, since a conference room and a pantry cost the same to build and here spread across three times the heads.

What 30 people cost here, and what they cost citywide

Three floors match this footprint at $64, $79 and $115 per square foot, and the middle one is the $79 above, 17 State Street's exact ask. Across 5,250 square feet that is $414,750 a year and $34,563 a month, about $1,152 per person per month. The same footprint at the $75 median across our whole New York book runs $378,000 a year and $31,500 a month, roughly $36,750 a year less, or $102 per head per month.

A three-floor median sits wherever the middle floor sits. Across all four floors we carry downtown the FiDi median is $72, level with the city, putting 5,250 square feet at $378,000 a year and $31,500 a month, which is the number we would budget from. Electricity adds $2 to $4 per square foot, another $875 to $1,750 a month here, and escalations, cleaning and after-hours HVAC are argued once and paid all term.

What a floor for 30 genuinely needs

Every foot quoted here is rentable, which in New York includes your share of the lobby, corridors, core and mechanical space. Usable runs 15-25% below, so 5,250 rentable is 3,938 to 4,463 feet you can actually draw on, and the honest allowance per person falls from 175 to between 131 and 149. That is the number a test fit works from.

Thirty people belong on one floor, and all three FiDi options at this size are single partial floors. Interrogate the room count rather than the desk count: whether the large meeting room can sit inboard instead of eating the window line, and whether the phone rooms can be built near the core. Count the rooms you would still have to build and price that list against the improvement allowance.

Growing into it, and growing out of it

At 45 people, half again this page's headcount, the same allowance calls for 7,875 square feet, and nothing we carry in FiDi reaches that today. Three routes work: take a floor already sized past today, which 32 Old Slip does at 6,997 feet and 40 desks, still holding 45 at a tighter 155 feet each; buy rights rather than space, a right of first offer on contiguous space plus an expansion option priced now; or keep the term short enough to reprice.

Term length decides which route is open: landlords amortize free rent and improvement money across the term, so direct deals at this size run five to seven years, while a sublease is shorter, cheaper and taken as it stands. Negotiate the exit while you still have leverage, through assignment and sublease rights with consent not to be unreasonably withheld.

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

None of the three floors that work today is a close substitute for the others.

• 32 Old Slip, Partial 32nd Floor. 6,997 square feet at $64, about $37,317 a month, furnished and wired with views. At 30 people that is 233 rentable feet each and roughly $1,244 per head.
• 17 State Street, Partial 26th Floor. 6,606 square feet at $79, about $43,490 a month, prebuilt with views. At 30 people that is 220 feet each and about $1,450 per head.
• 4 World Trade Center, Partial 44th Floor. 5,023 square feet at $115, about $48,137 a month, furnished, with reception, a pantry and floor-to-ceiling windows. The only floor sized close to the 5,250 this page calls for, at 167 feet each and $1,605 per head.

The spread from cheapest to dearest is $10,820 a month and $129,837 a year, and it runs backwards to size: the smallest floor costs the most. Send the hiring plan and we will test fit all three.