New York City is composed of the 5 boroughs. Manhattan is the largest central business district in the U.S. The other boroughs are Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx. The City contains over 550 million square feet of office space. The Manhattan portion of the city (Midtown, Midtown South, Downtown) contains about 450 million square feet of the total. This qualifies Manhattan as containing approximately 25% of all of the office space in our nation. About 2/3 of all of the economic activity in the City occurs in the Manhattan segment. The TAMI sector (including startups) employs about a million people which makes it the largest business sector for jobs, and this large slice of the employee picture fits right in with New York's 24/7 work culture. The financial sector (FIRE) has about 500,000 jobs. There are about 70,000 licensed attorneys in New York, NY, and about 19,000 registered physicians and 2,700 dentists.
You'll find more human diversity, shopping, dining, museums and entertainment in the City than almost anywhere else which makes it a mecca for tourism. Destinations include the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Times Square, The World Trade Center and more. More than 8,000,000 people live in the 5 boroughs. It is clearly the cultural and business capital of our country. The Midtown neighborhoods span 34th - 59th Streets, River to River. Midtown South neighborhoods span the area between 34th Street and 14th Street. We classify the Downtown neighborhoods as everything south of 14th Street.
According to the NYC Bureau of Labor Statistics in the first quarter of 2018 there are 194,000 people working in "information", 468,000 people working in "Financial activities", 748,000 in "Professional and business services and 191,000 in "Other services". The "Health services" sector is coupled with "Education" and the combined total is 999,000 people. Statistics from City-Data indicate that Health care accounts for 6% of the working population and Educational services also accounts for 6%. so we assume that each sector employs about 450,000 persons. The highest paid workers in New York City are Lawyers, followed in descending order by Dentists, Financial analysts, Accountants and auditors and Computer programmers. The median resident age in Manhattan is 35.8 years and the estimated median household income is $78,000. The median condominium value (2016) is over $1,000,000.
The freelance and independent contractor groups are natural targets for shared professional office space as well as executive suites and co-working facilities. The sheer number of people working in Manhattan in business as well as health care makes it a focal point for shared professional offices because getting rent from vacant individual offices affects the bottom line because of monthly payments as well as additional business or practice that arises from the symbiotic relationship between the "guest" and "host" (sublessee and sublessor or licensee and licensor).
It is hard to estimate how many individual offices are available for rent at the current time because while there are reliable statistics about the commercial office space market as far as the amount of space available for sublease or direct lease, or the total amount of commercial office space in the city - there is no reliable indicator for the number of individual offices offered for sublease. Of course, it is our hope that LookingForSpace.com will grow to the point where defining the listings of offices for sublease on our site will similarly define the actual market.
The Europeans were the first to settle here, at the southern tip of Manhattan in 1624. The Dutch first established the colony of "New Amsterdam" on "Manhattan" Island. Forty years later, the area fell under control of the English who renamed it "New York". The English were able to convert what was mostly a farming community to a commercially successful area that by 1750 was a rival to Boston and Philadelphia in commercial importance.
In 1776 the Declaration of Independence was read out loud on the steps of city hall and by 1783 the "Redcoats" were all gone. At this moment in history, New York was the capital of the new federal government.
A generation later, in the early 1800's New York was the largest city in America with a population of 100,000. By 1850 it was over 800,000 due to huge waves of immigrants. In the 1890's Manhattan and its neighboring cities joined together to become the 5 Boroughs of Manhattan (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Staten Island) under the single entity "New York City".
The first major commercial office buildings in the style we know today were The Flatiron Building (175 Fifth Avenue) in 1902, The Woolworth Building (233 Broadway) in 1913, The Chrysler Building (405 Lexington Avenue) in 1930 and the Empire State Building (350 Fifth Avenue) in 1931. Visualizing these locations, you can understand the steady uptown growth from Lower Manhattan to Midtown.
Public transportation was required to handle the growing population and the Port Of New York Authority was formed in 1921 to control transportation issues for the area. In 1931 they built the George Washington Bridge, and in 1937 they built the Lincoln Tunnel. After 1945 there was a post war construction boom resulting in the metropolis we see today and which in fact is currently undergoing another construction boom as Midtown zoning is modified and property values continue to soar.
At the beginning of the 20th century, New York housed about 75 of America's top 100 Corporations, and there were at least 1,000,000 manufacturing jobs in over 25,000 factories. In 1960-1965 the economy collapsed and over half of these jobs evaporated. Today, metropolitan New York houses about 55 of the Fortune 500 companies with an oversize role dedicated to the financial industry (American Express, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Master Card to name a few. It is also heavy in telecom companies and content creators like Time Warner, Cablevision, Verizon, Viacom, 21 Century Fox, CBS and ABC. It is also home to great publishing empires, fashion houses, jewelry manufacturers and retailers, and of course even today certain specialty sales and manufacturing areas of the garment industry.
Today, important in relation to our Tech/Media section, New York has built a Silicon Alley mirroring California's Silicon Valley. New York is the financial center of the world competing today with London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo for overall dominance.
Last, but of upmost importance, New York City and its Boroughs are home to the best pizza and bagels in America - no matter what the other cities say!
