“Prebuilt” offices take market by storm

From left: 245 Park Avenue, 444 Madison Avenue and 292 Madison Avenue
From left: 245 Park Avenue, 444 Madison Avenue and 292 Madison Avenue

With so much of Lower Manhattan’s office space dismantled by Hurricane Sandy, businesses in need of temporary office space fast are shrugging custom built, for “prebuilt” spaces, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Like a furnished apartment, prebuilt offices come with Wifi, phones, printers, desks and even coffee all ready to go. A two-person prebuilt office rents for approximately $1,500 per month, according to the Journal.

Experts told the Journal, that the prebuilt office market has expanded to close to 4 million square feet in the city in recent years.

The rapidly growing niche commercial market fills buildings such as 245 Park Avenue, between 46th and 47th streets, developed by Regus Group and rented by Thrillist Media Agency, a men’s lifestyle online publisher, while their offices at 568 Broadway were without power.

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Moreover, 444 Madison Avenue292 Madison Avenue and a new Regus Group development at 747 Third Avenue all feature new prebuilt office space.

“Owners are responding to the demand in the marketplace for smaller space where tenants can come in and don’t have to go through complexity and time and expense of building out their own space. It’s filling a niche in marketplace,” Bill Rudin, president of Rudin Management, which has done over 120,000 square feet of prebuilts in the last few years, said. [WSJ]Christopher Cameron