Office Space for 50 People in Hudson Yards

What the 175 feet a head absorbs

The 8,750 is a planning allowance, not a furniture order, and it holds in every submarket we work in because what it pays for does not change with the neighborhood. Take a normal loss factor out and a designer draws on roughly 7,000 usable feet, of which fifty workstations and their aisles claim about 3,250.

• Enclosed meeting rooms, close to 900 feet, which is why a floor rated for fifty desks will not also hold a boardroom.
• Five or six phone rooms at about 50 feet each, a pantry near 600, and reception, storage and an IT closet at another 500.
• Around 1,500 feet of corridor and slack, the first thing surrendered when fifty people squeeze onto a smaller plate.

Change the program and the number moves. Private offices along the window line push past 200 feet a head and want 10,000 or more; shared desks work it toward 140, by less than most teams expect. At $200 a foot, every 10 square feet a head is $100,000 a year.

What fifty people cost here, and against the city

At $200 per square foot per year, 8,750 square feet runs $1,750,000 a year and about $145,833 a month. Across fifty people that is $35,000 each a year, roughly $2,917 a month a head.

The median across our current New York availability is $72, and that comparison is worth writing down rather than skipping. The same 8,750 square feet at $72 costs $630,000 a year and $52,500 a month, about $1,050 a person, so Hudson Yards asks $1,120,000 more every year for the identical room, roughly $5.6 million across five years. Penn Plaza, on the same commuter rail a few blocks east, has a $52 median, about $37,917 a month for the same footprint.

And $145,833 is not the occupancy cost. Electricity is commonly billed on top at $2 to $4 per square foot, another $17,500 to $35,000 a year here, cleaning and after-hours HVAC sit outside the rent, and taxes arrive through a base-year escalation that deserves an argument in the lease.

What a floor for fifty has to contain

Every foot quoted in New York is rentable, folding in a share of the lobby, the corridors and the mechanical rooms. Usable lands 15-25% below, so 8,750 rentable becomes 6,563 to 7,438 drawable feet, or 131 to 149 square feet a person rather than 175. At $200 a foot that is $262,500 to $437,500 a year of rent on space nobody sits in.

Fifty people hold four or five conversations at once on an ordinary afternoon, and that concurrency sets the room program more than the seat count does. We plan one room seating twelve to fourteen, three or four for four to six, a phone room per eight to ten people, and a pantry for the all-hands.

What we cannot tell you is how that lands on the one Hudson Yards floor we hold. There is no description, photography or floor plan on our file for it, so the shape of the plate and where enclosed rooms can go are tour questions. We will get a plan from ownership first.

Growing into it, and growing out of it

Fifty is rarely the number that matters. Seventy-five people at the same allowance is 13,125 square feet, $2,625,000 a year at $200; thirty people is 5,250 feet and $1,050,000. Neither exists in Hudson Yards, because our book here is one floor.

That is the structural problem with planning a fifty-person company into this submarket. There is nowhere to step up to and nowhere to step down to. Chelsea spans nine floors, SoHo nine, Flatiron six. Here, growth means leaving, and leaving means moving twice.

So buy flexibility in the clauses while the landlord still wants the deal. At $200 a foot, 20% of empty room costs $350,000 a year, which argues for buying the option rather than the square footage. Settle sublease language in the same round: consent not unreasonably withheld, no recapture right, a profit split.

What is on the book right now at this size

• 66 Hudson Boulevard, Partial 53rd Floor. 10,517 rentable square feet at $200 per square foot per year, about $175,283 a month and $2,103,400 a year, rated 60 desks. Across fifty people that is 210 rentable feet each and roughly $3,506 a head a month.

It is the only Hudson Yards floor we hold, and it runs 1,767 square feet above the fifty-person allowance, so a team of fifty buys about $353,400 a year of room it does not need yet. Either that is expansion space you were going to pay for eventually, or it is waste, and the hiring plan decides which.

We will arrange the tour, and we will not send you alone. Fifty people at Penn Plaza's $52 median, about $37,917 a month for the same footprint, is a different company from fifty at $145,833, and that is best judged standing in both rooms. Send us the headcount, the hiring plan and your move date. We represent tenants only.