VIDEO: An Inside Look At NYC’s Amenities Arms Race

Offices used to be designed around the big boss' preferences — corner offices, easy transit connections to the suburbs, cubicles for the underlings — but companies can’t get away with that anymore. These days, businesses have to offer more than a desk and a paycheck, and New York City landlords are scrambling to help them stand out.

“If you think about it, 10 years ago, when you were applying for a job, no one thinks about free lunches, and no one thinks about a bowling alley in their lobby, and no one thinks about a studio in your own space with oak floors, and now it's the thing,” Shutterstock Head of Global Facilities and Operations Razia Ferdousi-Meyer told Bisnow.

There has been a flood of office development in New York City in recent years, and millions more SF of newly renovated or new construction office space will be hitting Manhattan over the next two years. Meanwhile, coworking companies are taking more and more space, and while rents have been steady, landlords are still offering major concessions to tenants. 

So competition is fierce, getting fiercer, and landlords are going to great lengths — and expense — to offer their tenants the best amenities they can.

“The tenants really do drive what the landlords are willing to give, because the landlords are all understanding that coming to work today, in this generation, culturally, it has to feel really, really good to the people who are working at these companies,” Industry City Director of Leasing Kathe Chase said.

Reporting: Miriam Hall. Video and Editing: Travis Gonzalez. Story Editing: Ethan Rothstein.