Blog - The Search for A Space

151 W 25th Street - Awesome.

Feast your eyes upon this beauty! 3,650 square feet of recently renovated space for us to fill, and at a great price at that!

151 W 25th St is between 6th and 7th Avenues. It’s a stone’s throw from Whole Foods (!) and a straight shot into Madison Square Park and Shake Shack only a couple of blocks away!

2 blocks from 23rd St 1, 2, F,V, and PATH trains
3 blocks from 23rd St RW and ACE trains
7 blocks from 28th St 4 & 6 trains and Penn Station

This sucker is central!

Olaf, whose company is our potential anchor tenant, also loves the space. We’re going to be discussing more serious business details this week and next to see if we can come to terms we all like.

Now, don’t get your hopes up too high yet— we’ve been here before. There’s no deal until ink is on paper.

We’ll keep you posted!

200 Varick, Revisited

Since we last visited, the space has been built out a little more— new lights, seen here, a new, bluer paint job, printer, fax, new windows and door for the conference room.

The space would have room for about 15 desks, which would be cozy but on the small side.

We’re looking at this as a fallback in case our more ambitious plans fall through. More on that in the next post!

Check out more photos of the 200 Varick space here.

200 Varick Street

I can’t seem to find my photos of this space, so another trip down there might be in order.

The space has room for about 15 desks that we’d be able to use, and already has a paint job that’s complimentary to NWC’s current color scheme.

Upsides:

- Flexible arrangement: would be able to partner with Squarespace

- Quick move-in: Space is largely set up and would require little buildout

Downsides:

- Relatively small: 15 desks would go rather fast!

- Location: you be the judge. Location is critical. Check the map… do you think this space is close enough to the various subway lines that location is not an issue? Sound off in the comments!

594 Broadway: beautiful, but expensive

This space is wonderful:

By my measurements, it could fit approximately 30 desks, and would make for a fantastic coworking space. The problem? Too rich for our blood.

In order to break even, NWC would need to be nearly full all the time— with only a little wiggle room. We’ll keep an eye out for a possible deal.

In the meantime, check out the photos and dream with us!

Coworking in a Salon?

Laptops and a haircut?

This space is in an extremely accessible area (just steps away from the many subway lines of 42nd st), the right size, and the right price. We’d either work out a deal with the landlord to have them take down a bunch of the walls, or we’d pick up some sledgehammers and do some smashing ourselves! (I’m inclined toward the latter of the two).

We’re talking to a possible anchor tenant, and will try to show them this and other spaces this week. Stay tuned!

150 is greater than 1

Stupidly simple math, right?

When you’re engaged in an effort such as this one, it’s critical to understand the power of the people. The resources and connections of one person could never compare to the resources and connections of many.

That’s why it’s so important that we, in our effort to find a space for New Work City, do everything possible to band together to find a solution.

Lots and lots of people want to see this become a reality, and if we combine our collective potential, then we have a force to be reckoned with.

Here’s what we need. The situation that would work best for us at this stage would be to find an anchor tenant— a growing company that’s looking to expand, and would be interested in anchoring a creative work community such as ours.

One of our community members found a shop that fits this bill today, and we’ll be working to see if something can come of that.

In the meantime: who do you know who might want to talk to us?

Going to the source

Many of the existing coworking spaces were able to get their space in part because they found landlords who were excited by the coworking movement and its prospects for the future.

To this point, we haven’t been focusing much on talking directly to space owners. We’ll be doing more of that now.

I just did a search for real estate-related Meetups in NYC, and there are 62 hits!

Most of them are extremely salesy and have way too much of a sleazy vibe for my taste, but there are a few meetups that show promise:

The Big Apple & New York REIA

The NY Real Estate & Technology Meetup!

Real Estate 2.0 Meetup

The NYC Metro BIM

Has anyone been to any of these or heard anything about them? Any pointers?

No Deal at 81 Franklin

It looks like we won’t be able to come up with a workable deal at 81 Franklin St, so we’re moving right along in our search!

On a side note, we’ll be spending more time coworking at Gramstand while we’re working on the project. Come work with us! More info

A Sample of Existing Resources at 81 Franklin St.

- Redundant T1 and ADSL
- Vonage supported
- Existing Asterix VoIP service at low rates
- Networked black & white printers (included)
- Metered color printing at $0.33/page
- Filing cabinets
- 24x7 keycard access for full timers
- For part timers, someone is usually there until 8-9:00.
- The new Whole Foods is 10 blocks away :-)