Best Brooklyn Office Location: DUMBO vs Downtown Brooklyn

Office space here averages roughly 45 percent less than Manhattan, and the gap holds for smaller teams too, with private offices sized for 11 to 20 people coming in up to 31 percent cheaper than comparable Manhattan space. Add the fact that most of the people you want to hire already live in Brooklyn, and the decision makes itself.

The question worth spending time on is which part of Brooklyn. For most CEOs and founders looking at a move out of Manhattan, it comes down to two neighborhoods less than a mile apart: Downtown Brooklyn and DUMBO. On a spreadsheet they can look interchangeable. In practice they are close to opposites, and the difference shows up in what your day-to-day experience actually feels like.

How different can two neighborhoods a mile apart really feel?

Downtown Brooklyn is a central business district and it moves like one: office towers, a major transit hub, a dense chain retail corridor, and a tenant base that skews institutional (think government agencies, college campuses, and back-office operations.) DUMBO is a nineteenth-century warehouse district on the waterfront that happens to have offices in it, with cobblestone streets, loft buildings, a creative community that largely knows each other, and the East River at the end of the block. Both are Brooklyn and both work. The difference is that one feels like going to the office and the other feels like entering a neighborhood.

Who are your neighbors going to be in DUMBO?

DUMBO is home to more than 160 architecture and creative design firms. Bjarke Ingels Group runs a 50,000 square foot headquarters at 45 Main Street, a lease it renewed as the largest DUMBO deal of 2025. Snøhetta relocated its New York headquarters from the Financial District to 55 Washington Street. Worrell Yeung, Post Company, Garrison Architects, Peterson Rich, and Think! Architecture (which relocated to DUMBO from Downtown Brooklyn earlier this year) are all within a few blocks of each other.

That kind of move is rarely about rent per square foot. It is about being surrounded by the people you pitch alongside, hire from, and collaborate with. Clustering shortens your recruiting cycle, it makes referrals happen over coffee instead of over email, and it means your clients understand something about your firm before they walk in the door.

What kind of space do you actually get in each location?

Downtown Brooklyn's office inventory skews toward towers with large, efficient floor plates, designed for companies planning around headcount and consistent layouts.

DUMBO's landmark buildings are quite different and feature oversized operable windows, high ceilings, hardwood and polished concrete floors, and roof gardens. Windows that open sound like a small thing until you have spent a few years in a sealed tower.

What does a normal weekday look like?

DUMBO gives you 85 acres of Brooklyn Bridge Park at the end of your block. Not a plaza. An actual waterfront park with lawns, courts, piers, and a view that makes recruiting easier. You can take a call while walking the East River. You can run a client meeting at Ziggy’s Roman Café or another neighborhood favorite. On the first Thursday of every month, the neighborhood's galleries stay open late and your team can walk to an art opening without getting on a train. Office workers benefit from a true mixed-use neighborhood.

Downtown Brooklyn is working on this. The Downtown Brooklyn Public Realm Plan exists specifically to make the neighborhood more people-centric by addressing congestion, widening sidewalks, adding green infrastructure, and better connecting major business hubs like Fulton Mall and Brooklyn Commons to green space, including Brooklyn Bridge Park. The renderings are beautiful, but public realm work moves on a timeline of years. DUMBO already has the waterfront, the walkability, and the open space those plans are working toward.

Is the commute better in Downtown Brooklyn?

This is the one place people assume Downtown Brooklyn wins outright, and it does have the denser hub. What gets missed is that DUMBO has the F at York Street, the A and C at High Street, and the 2 and 3 at Clark Street, plus NYC Ferry service from Fulton Ferry Landing to Wall Street, Midtown, and Williamsburg.

Broadway-Lafayette to York Street is one stop. Fulton to High Street is one stop. For a team spread across Brooklyn, Manhattan, New Jersey, and beyond, DUMBO is often the shorter trip.

When is Downtown Brooklyn the better call?

If you need 100,000+ contiguous square feet, or if your business runs on proximity to the courts or Borough Hall, Downtown Brooklyn may be the right choice and you should go take a look.

For more creative, design, PR, and growth-stage companies across tech, robotics and other high-growth industries, the answer is likely DUMBO.

Come see the difference.

DUMBO office space is available now across 20 Jay Street, 45 Main Street, and 55 Washington Street, in move-in ready suites with flexible lease terms.

View current availabilities or calculate your REAP tax credit if you are relocating from Manhattan.