Office Space for 75 People in Union Square

Where the 13,125 feet actually goes

The 175 square feet per person is a planning allowance rather than a desk count, and at 75 people it absorbs everything the team does away from one. Seventy-five workstations and their aisles take close to 4,900 feet, about half the drawable area. Enclosed meeting rooms want 1,500 more, one seating sixteen for the all-hands, two for eight to ten, three or four small ones. Eight or nine phone rooms at 50 feet apiece add 450, a pantry runs near 800, reception, storage and IT another 600, and the rest becomes corridor.

Density moves the allowance both ways. Perimeter offices for a leadership team push past 200 feet a head and size 75 people closer to 15,000; unassigned desks on a booking system run toward 140. We plan at 175 because it survives two years of hiring.

Rated capacity on the one floor that fits here is 79 desks, which is 13,754 square feet drawn at 174 a head, so the program above transfers onto it almost line for line. Seventy-five people leave four of those seats open on day one.

What seventy-five people cost, monthly and annually

At $65, the median asking rent across our New York book, 13,125 square feet is $853,125 a year, $71,094 a month, $948 per person per month. Union Square asks more. Its $88 median, about 36 percent above the city, takes the same footprint to $1,155,000 a year and $96,250 a month, $1,283 a head. The premium buys the 4/5/6, N/Q/R/W and L all at 14th Street, which most teams justify as a hiring cost.

A median is thin evidence in a market this small. Our three Union Square floors ask $60, $115 and rent on request, so 13,125 feet inside that band runs $65,625 to $125,781 a month. Price the floor.

Rent is not the whole check. Electricity bills on top at $2 to $4 per square foot, $26,250 to $52,500 a year here, cleaning above building standard is separate, and a base-year tax escalation compounds. Three percent a year carries $1,155,000 to about $1,379,000 by year seven, $8.85 million across the term.

Asking rent and taking rent are different numbers, and free rent is where most of the gap lives. Six months abated on a seven-year deal at $88 is $577,500, which spread across the term brings the annual cost near $1,072,500, about $82 a foot before escalations, and the abatement lands in the months you are paying for construction and rent at once.

What the floor has to do, and the rentable-to-usable gap

New York quotes rentable feet, which carry a share of lobbies, corridors and mechanical space nobody furnishes. Take 15 to 25 percent off the 13,754 at 836 Broadway and the drawable area is 10,316 to 11,691 feet, so 75 people work on 138 to 156 usable feet each rather than 175. Still a real office. It is also the number a test fit uses, and the gap between a 15 and a 25 percent loss factor here is 1,375 square feet, seven workstations and a conference room.

Ask for the usable area and the measurement standard before the letter of intent, then pay for a test fit. Seventy-five people hold six or seven conversations at once on an ordinary Tuesday, and that concurrency sets the room count more than the seat count does. One full floor helps: one pantry, one reception, one room that holds everybody, none of the program two half floors duplicate.

Delivery condition deserves the same scrutiny as the measurement. A floor handed over open and demolished is a different construction budget from one carrying a previous tenant's rooms, and whoever files the alteration with the Department of Buildings controls the calendar. Settle both in the letter of intent rather than in the lease comments.

Growing into it, out of it, and the clauses that decide which

Half again this headcount is 113 people and 19,775 square feet, about $1,740,000 a year at the Union Square median, and this submarket cannot deliver that today. The largest floor we carry here is the 13,754 above, where 113 people would sit at 122 rentable feet each. Undershooting costs money too: land at 60 rather than 75 and you pay for 3,254 unused feet, roughly $286,000 a year.

Term length decides the rest. A direct full-floor deal at this size runs five to seven years, since the landlord amortizes free rent and construction money across it and will not fund a fit-out on three. Every $10 per foot of allowance on the 13,125 is $131,250, and one free month per year of term is $673,750 over seven.

Buy flexibility back in the clauses: a right of first offer worth whatever the landlord can commit to, a sublease right that survives consent, and a letter of credit at six months not twelve, $577,500 instead of $1,155,000.

Personal exposure is negotiable too. A good guy guarantee caps it at the rent owed through the day the space goes back broom clean, $96,250 a month here rather than the balance of a seven-year lease, and most landlords concede that language long before they concede a shorter term.

The Union Square floor that fits seventy-five right now

• 836 Broadway, Entire 2nd Floor. One full floor of 13,754 square feet, rated 79 desks, floor plan and photographs on the listing, rent on request. At 75 people that is 183 rentable feet each, about $100,863 a month modeled at the Union Square median.

Nothing else here is close. Our other two Union Square availabilities are 4,000 feet at $115 and a furnished 2,500-foot sublease at $60 running through September 2027, a bridge for fourteen people and no help at 75. This market rarely has much on at once, so a full floor this size does not sit.

Widen by one submarket and our book opens: 1239 Broadway's entire 12th floor in NoMad is 12,500 feet at $62, about $64,583 a month, and 1700 Broadway's entire 26th in Midtown is 13,266 at $79, about $87,334. Send the hiring plan and we will test fit all three.

Both alternates read differently in person. The NoMad floor was built for a team of 75 to 80, polished concrete and exposed ceilings under new linear lighting with the restrooms already updated, so the spend there is furniture and cabling. The Midtown floor came out of a high-standard buildout two years ago, private offices mixed with open area and conference rooms, furnished and in move-in condition, with Central Park and Hudson River views.