Office Space for 50 People in FiDi

Where the 175 square feet per person actually goes

The 8,750 square feet is a planning allowance, not a count of desks. A workstation and its aisle take under half of it; the rest pays for rooms and for area nobody is assigned to.

• Enclosed meeting space, the largest claim after the desks: one room seating sixteen to twenty, two or three for six to eight, plus small rooms.
• Phone rooms at one per eight to ten people, so five or six here. A fifty-person floor fails on calls long before it fails on seats.
• A pantry with real seating, reception, storage and the circulation connecting all of it.

Private offices push a team past 200 feet a head, and genuine desk sharing pulls it toward 140. Meeting rooms are what climb faster than headcount, since more people means more conversations happening at once.

What 50 people cost here, and what they cost citywide

The FiDi median of $72 puts 8,750 square feet at $625,625 a year and about $52,135 a month, $1,043 per person. That $72 is the midpoint of the two floors closest to this footprint, $64 and $79.

The same footprint at $65, the median across our whole New York book, comes to $568,750 a year and $47,396 a month, $948 a head. Downtown therefore costs a 50-person team about $56,875 more a year, roughly $95 per person per month, a narrower premium than most founders expect. Neither figure is what leaves the account: free rent and the improvement allowance move the real cost further than a dollar on the face rate ever does.

What a floor for 50 genuinely needs

Every foot quoted in New York is rentable, folding in your share of the lobby, corridors, core and mechanical space. Usable runs 15-25% below, so 8,750 rentable leaves 6,563 to 7,438 feet you can draw rooms on, and the honest allowance falls from 175 per person to between 131 and 149. A test fit works from that second number.

Fifty people belong on one floor wherever the plate allows it, since splitting means duplicating a pantry and reception, or building an internal stair the landlord must approve and the tenant pays for. Both floors at this size are partial floors, so ask on the tour where the demising line falls and whether the large meeting room can sit inboard instead of eating the window line. Then price the rooms you would still have to build against the allowance on offer.

Growing into it, and growing out of it

Half again this headcount is 75 people, 13,125 square feet on the same allowance, and nothing on our FiDi book comes near it. A team of 50 taking a 6,600 to 7,000 foot floor downtown has spent its slack on day one, so the next hiring wave becomes a move.

Buy the rights the day you sign, when they cost least. A right of first offer on contiguous space costs a landlord nothing to grant and is worth a great deal the month a neighbor leaves, and an expansion option should name its rent formula now rather than leaving it to fair market value. Assignment and sublease rights are the exit, so press for consent not to be unreasonably withheld. Landlords amortize free rent and improvement money across the term, which is why we land clients here at five to seven years with an option.

What is on our book for 50 people in FiDi right now

Two floors come closest, and neither one reaches 8,750 square feet.

• 32 Old Slip, Partial 32nd Floor. 6,997 square feet at $64, about $37,317 a month, furnished and wired with views. Planned for 40 people, it takes 50 at 140 rentable feet each and roughly $746 a head.
• 17 State Street, Partial 26th Floor. 6,606 square feet at $79, about $43,490 a month, prebuilt with views. Planned for 38, it takes 50 at 132 feet each and about $870 a head.

The gap between them is $6,173 a month and $74,066 a year, and the cheaper floor is the larger one. If 175 feet a person is a requirement rather than a target, FiDi does not have it today, and we would widen toward submarkets carrying full floors. Send the org chart and we will test fit both.