Office Space for 50 People in Midtown

The 8,750 square feet, and what it absorbs

The number is a planning ratio, not a furniture schedule. A workstation and its aisle take well under half the 175 feet credited to each head; the rest is rooms.

• Workstations and their circulation, the part founders picture first and the part that costs least.
• Meeting rooms, the largest single bite, and why a floor drawn for fifty never holds fifty desks and a boardroom at once.
• Phone and focus rooms, structural at this headcount because an open plan of fifty stops absorbing calls.
• A pantry seating a real fraction of the company, plus reception, storage and corridors.

Push past 175 when private offices line the window wall or equipment takes area from people. Under it works when desks are genuinely shared, though the seats you remove return as booths.

What fifty people cost in Midtown

Two of the three matching floors publish a rent, $79 at 1700 Broadway and $125 at 520 Madison Avenue, a 58% spread inside one submarket, and $102 is the midpoint. That puts 8,750 square feet at $892,500 a year, $74,375 a month, $1,488 per person per month.

That midpoint sits above the submarket. Across the four Midtown floors we carry the median is $79, which puts the same footprint at $57,604 a month, roughly $1,152 a head. The difference is the 17,296-foot floor at $65 on our book, which is no use to fifty people.

Against $65, the median across our current New York availability, the same footprint runs $47,396 a month, so Midtown at $102 costs a fifty-person company $323,750 more a year. Electricity is billed on top at $2 to $4 a foot, taxes arrive through a base-year escalation that compounds, and hours past the building's standard are billed as overtime HVAC. Free rent and an improvement allowance pull the other way, moving a five-year total more than the rate does.

What a floor for fifty needs to contain

Every foot quoted here is rentable, carrying its share of lobby, corridors and mechanical space. Usable typically lands 15-25% below, so 8,750 rentable becomes 6,563 to 7,438 planning feet, or 131 to 149 usable a head. Ask each landlord for that number, since loss factors differ by building.

Fifty people hold four or five conversations at once on a normal day, and that overlap sizes the room program more than the seat count does. Plan on one room for twelve to fourteen, three or four for four to six, and five or six phone rooms, one per eight to ten people. No conference room at this size holds an all-hands, so the pantry has to.

All three matches keep the team on one level. 1700 Broadway and 45 West 45th Street are entire floors, so no demising wall constrains the plan; 520 Madison Avenue is a partial floor shared with a neighbor.

Seventy-five people, and the clauses that get you there

Half again this headcount needs 13,125 square feet, $111,563 a month at $102 or $86,406 at the $79 Midtown median. One match reaches it: 1700 Broadway, 13,266 feet rated at 76 desks, which absorbs the growth inside one lease and prices that headroom into its premium. 520 Madison Avenue at 41 desks and 45 West 45th Street at 47 are at capacity the day fifty people walk in.

Term length follows. A direct lease on a full floor here runs five to seven years, because the landlord amortizes free rent and improvement dollars across it and will not fund a fit-out on three. A shorter term means funding the buildout yourself; a longer one underwrites a 2032 headcount nobody can honestly name.

Buy the flexibility back in the clauses: a right of first offer on contiguous space with a defined response window, consent to sublease not unreasonably withheld, no recapture right, profit shared rather than surrendered. Our Midtown book shows no second floor in any of these three buildings, so the sublease language matters more than the expansion option does.

What is on our book at this size in Midtown

Cost per head sorts these three faster than dollars per foot does.

• 1700 Broadway, Entire 26th Floor. 13,266 square feet at $79, about $87,335 a month, rated 76 desks, furnished, with a conference room and views. Across fifty people, 265 rentable feet and $1,747 a head: the lowest rate, the largest check, because twenty-six of those desks are unhired.
• 520 Madison Avenue, Partial 21st Floor. 7,092 square feet at $125, about $73,875 a month, rated 41 desks, with a pantry, conference room, reception and a floor plan. That is 142 rentable feet and $1,478 a head: the highest rate, the smallest check.
• 45 West 45th Street, Entire 10th Floor. 8,230 square feet, rated 47 desks, floor plan published, and at 165 feet a head the closest to what the model calls for. The ask is not published; we will get it.

Between the first two floors, $13,460 a month is $161,520 a year, buying 35 rated desks rather than a better address. Send the hiring plan and we will test fit all three.