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Office space in NYC
47 points by chris_dickson on Sept 30, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 21 comments
Dear Hacker News community,

I recently co-founded a tech startup in NYC. My co-founder and I just rented some great space in soho and we're looking to turn it into a vibrant, thriving startup hub. Sorry if this is ad-like, but I feel like the benefit of this place to startups in New York outweighs the spaminess of the submission.

The space is an entire fully furnished loft that is currently divided up into bays that can easily fit 3 to 4 people each. The price is $875 for each 150 (actual) sq ft. bay. I've been looking around at prices for desk space in the city, and this package is definitely one of the best deals in NY. Great for startups because of the month to month lease and all inclusive amenities. My co-founder and I will also be working out of the space. Here are the details:

-Exact location is 447 Broadway (Broadway and Grand) in soho (supposedly "Silicon Alley") which is extremely close to the 1, 6, N, R, Q, W, J, M, Z subways -Each bay is 150 (actual) sq feet and are $875 each. There are two smaller bays at half of a full bay ($437.50) -Month to month lease. You would need to pay 1st and last month up front with 1 month security -Really cool soho loft with a great vibe, 16 ft. ceilings, 2 bathrooms, elevator access -All utilities (including free internet) included, free use of communal conference room -Great deli right down stairs that has everything, and great food close by (chinatown and little italy) -24 hour access -Free cleaning and trash removal 3 times per week -Use of kitchen with sink, microwave, fridge, tea/coffee

I think the benefits of this place go beyond the cost if we can fill it up with tech startups... it would have a great motivating community aspect that everyone would benefit from.

Please get in touch if interested and tell your friends!

Chris Dickson dickson@atmanetworks.com




There are some other similar options for startups that have impressive price points & amenities.

From my research, there is:

Green Desk in DUMBO - http://www.green-desk.com/ Great for environmentally conscious startups, and awesome office environment and amenities.

Sunshine Suites in Tribeca and Noho - http://sunshineny.com/ Mixes techies with non-technology startups. Big networking opportunities.

TechSpace in Chelsea, Union Sq., and West Village - http://www.techspace.com The pricey option, but I think they've been around for awhile.

And then there are other options like co-working (for a price, or for free like at Jelly - http://wiki.workatjelly.com/JellyInNYC), which is much less expensive, trading your services for desk space at a random company, or searching craigslist for open desks.

I have no experience with any of these choices (except I've been to a few Jelly coworking meetups). I spend my time at the fine New York Public Library system, punching away at the keys on my laptop.


Sunshine Suites is a lot more cramped. Have you been in there? The place is set of cubicles set up with portable 5 foot tall "walls". You and a friend can get 2 adjoining desks for $800 a month, and that might be perfect for what you need. But you need to deal with the noise of the communal space.


Agreed. Sunshine Suites is cramped(but most the cubes are empty) unless you work with garyv in the back.


There is also the Brooklyn Creative League (http://www.brooklyncreativeleague.com/) around here in the Park Slope/Gowanus area, but honestly I feel like most of these shared office spaces in Brooklyn charge too much. Almost $500 for 64' square feet in Gowanus is pretty crazy.

Unfortunately $875 for 150 sq ft is a really, really good price, especially for SoHo.


That's actually super close to where I live. Any reaction on BCL besides the price? Ignoring cost, what did you think of the space & amenities?


I used to be in both the Union Sq and Chelsea TechSpace offices. They're definitely pricey, and the Union Sq space was anything but quiet. The Chelsea spot was more quiet, but mainly due to it just not being as full. Nevermind the guy in the space next to us that refused to use anything but speakerphone when speaking on the phone. The internet was a little flaky, and they didn't even have redundancy built in (I believe they do now though).

The best areas of TS was the 10th floor in the Union Sq. building. Much bigger rooms that could fit 15+ employees but had a much more enclosed 'private office' feel to them.


What are the rules RE: living in the space?


I think it's zoned as commercial so I think that means you can't live in it. Also there are no showers, so that might not be great for your personal life


In a more informal vein, I just got some space in Soho and am looking to host a semi-regular hackathon. I have done these in Philly in the past, and it has worked as follows. A bunch of people get together for a full day on the weekend, enter with a goal of accomplishing a side project (either a small new project or a piece of a larger project), and we all work from early morning til late night, then get some good food and drink afterwords. At previous hackathons I've gotten iPhone apps and simple web apps built, and they have been great fun. Sometimes it's just motivating to be around a bunch of people who are working something out of passion for creating, and this is a good way to harness that vibe. Get in touch with me if you're in NYC and interested in this sort of thing: @kortina on twitter or the same on gmail.


Yeah we'd love to something like this. We have set our own personal hackathon weekends to get little unrelated side projects done, but the more the merrier! And we're in soho


Sounds like a jelly but with one communal goal, I'm in!


Let me add direct Gmaps link http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&... :-)


Something you may want to consider, I worked at an Ad Agency in NYC and they rented out some of their desks and stuff cheap to startup. A lot of NYC companies will cut you a great deal because they don't need all the space, you cost them nothing, we even hosted their dev servers on site since we had a pretty decent connect. (they may have paid for some of the connect since we did have to firewall them off from our local lan segment).

Call around anywhere you can think of that may have extra space like say the financial companies etc. You would be surprised at what having some good product people and tech guys around can do for a business, they may even swap consulting for space.


Photos would really help to sell this.


You are completely right, can't believe I forgot. I used Posterous, here's the url:

http://chris-kv7gn.posterous.com/


We just took space at http://www.42west24.com/

Month-to-month, space is great and not super crowded


Nice area for sure. So are the bays not secured by actual walls ? From the pics , it looks like a lot more than 150 sq ft.


I know, it feels like more as well, but I guess we're used to people exaggerating in NYC. It also might be the open nature of the office


Sounds good but a little pricey even for Manhattan.


I put 150 sq feet just to be completely honest and accurate, and that is actually the exact square footage of each space. If I did it like other listings and included the huge common areas, I could list it as 315 sq feet, but that just seemed lame to me. If you're at all interested I would suggest taking a look because it's got a great unique open feel to it and the text description doesn't do it much justice. If the price is the problem, I'd love to know where you would care. Thanks, Chris


Nope, that's a great deal.




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