Office Space for 75 People in NoMad

What 175 square feet a person has to cover

Seventy-five workstations and their aisles account for well under half of 13,125 square feet, so the allowance was never a desk count. The rest pays for the rooms a company this size keeps booked from ten to four, the phone rooms that keep calls off the open floor, reception, storage and IT, and the circulation joining it, which alone can take a fifth of a floor.

This is also where the largest conference room stops holding the company, so the all-hands moves to the pantry and the pantry gets drawn as a room, not a counter. Where a team lands against 175 follows how it works rather than how many people it employs: private offices along the window line push toward 200 a head, while an open plan on shared desks holds under 150 and gives the difference back in booths. That swing is 3,750 feet either way, $232,500 a year at the NoMad median.

What seventy-five people cost here, and against the city

At the $62 NoMad median, 13,125 square feet runs $813,750 a year and $67,813 a month, $10,850 per person per year and about $904 a head monthly. Both matching floors ask exactly $62, so the median is the number written on each of them rather than the midpoint of a spread.

At $65, the median across our whole New York book, the same footprint is $853,125 a year and $71,094 a month, so NoMad returns about $39,375 a year to a team this size, $525 a head. Real, and smaller than three other lines in the deal. Electricity is billed on top at $2 to $4 a foot, $26,250 to $52,500 here, and a 3% escalation carries year one's $813,750 to roughly $972,000 by year seven. One free month is worth $67,813, an improvement allowance of $50 a foot is $656,250, and a six-month letter of credit ties up $406,875. We argue those before the asking rent. Asking rent is where a landlord opens and taking rent is where the deal signs, and on a full floor this size the gap between the two is almost always paid in free months and allowance rather than in the number on the first page.

What a floor for seventy-five genuinely needs

The room program follows concurrency rather than the census. Seventy-five people hold six or seven conversations at once on an ordinary Tuesday, and a plan drawn off headcount survives the tour and fails by March.

• One room seating sixteen to eighteen, the client room, rarely free after ten.
• Five or six mid-size rooms for four to eight, which absorb the day's bookings.
• Nine or ten phone rooms, one per eight people, which teams routinely under-build.

Then correct for the loss factor. Every foot quoted in New York is rentable, carrying lobbies, corridors and mechanical space, so usable lands 15-25% lower: 13,125 rentable draws as 9,844 to 11,156 feet, 131 to 149 real feet a head. Five points of loss factor is 656 feet here, four people's worth of room, and the real gap settles only on a test fit. The 12,500-foot floor gives 9,375 to 10,625 usable, 125 to 142 a head, the number to design against rather than the 167 on the rent bill.

Growing into it, and growing out of it

Half again this team, a hundred and thirteen people, asks for 19,775 square feet, $1,226,050 a year and about $102,171 a month at $62. Nothing in NoMad's current availability approaches that, and one floor on our entire book is that large, so half again means a move, not an expansion.

That makes runway, not rent, the difference between the two floors: 1239 Broadway carries seventy-five at 167 feet and, per its listing, eighty, one hiring year and no more, while 1235 Broadway is already full at 127. A direct lease on a full floor this size runs five to seven years, because a landlord amortizes free rent and improvement money over that length, and almost no company forecasts headcount honestly past year two. Flexibility gets bought in the clauses, not in the rent: a right of first offer on contiguous space in writing, an expansion option priced by a stated mechanism, not market, sublease consent that cannot be unreasonably withheld, no recapture right, and a good guy guarantee in place of a personal one.

What is on our book at this size right now

Two NoMad floors are in range, both entire, both at $62.

• 1239 Broadway, Entire 12th Floor. 12,500 square feet, about $64,583 a month, rated 71 desks and described in the listing as built for a team of 75 to 80, with polished concrete and exposed ceilings. Seventy-five sit at 167 rentable feet each and $861 a head monthly, 625 feet inside the model.
• 1235 Broadway, Entire 4th Floor. 9,500 square feet, about $49,083 a month, rated 54 desks, furnished and wired, with a wraparound window line and a large wet pantry. At seventy-five that is 127 rentable feet a head and $654 monthly, an open plan on shared desks and nothing else, in exchange for weeks to occupancy.

NoMad's third floor, 22 West 27th Street at 6,000 feet and $57, is too small here. If one room for seventy-five matters more than the submarket, two floors elsewhere land on the number: 1700 Broadway [Entire 26th Floor] in Midtown, 13,266 feet at $79, $273,000 a year above 1239 Broadway, and 836 Broadway [Entire 2nd Floor] in Union Square, 13,754 feet, rent on request. The Midtown floor is listed as newly built two years ago to a high standard, a mix of offices, open area and conference rooms, furnished and in move-in condition. Both are photographed, 836 Broadway has a floor plan on file and neither carries a Matterport tour, where the two NoMad floors do. Send the hiring plan and we will test fit both.