The light cannot be overestimated. Or the view of the bridges. Or the giant open floor cutaway with grand stairs merging two floors, which gives the sense that ideas flow up, down and sideways here with ease.
So yeah, 72andSunny has a pretty sweet office set-up.
If creative workplaces need their proper physical approximation to do creative work, then the ad agency 72andSunny has found its ideal home in Dumbo’s Empire Stores building—originally a production facility for roasted coffee beans—hugging Brooklyn Bridge Park in the shadow of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.
Currently housing 120 people (with plenty of room to grow) on two floors, the mid-century industrial space is a recent change after outgrowing their NoHo space near Cooper Square in Manhattan.
Nestling themselves in creative environments is something of a habit for the 13-year-old company with offices in Los Angeles and Amsterdam. Their California campus is housed in the renovated offices and drafting houses on Howard Hughes’ old research and development complex in Playa Vista.
“Our business is our talent. We make creative assets that go out into the world, but then they disappear or maybe live on the Internet, so our talent is our equity, and they need to have the best possible environment,” says New York Managing Director James Townsend on a recent appropriately sunny afternoon, noting that square footage literally defines how many people you can employ and how much money you can make. “We’re like a law firm. If you have more employees, you can make more money.”
But the primary driver of this location, he says, is that they’re a storytelling and creative communications company, necessitating that the space, by default, comes with an interesting story. Hard to be innovative in a basement under fluorescent lights. But Dumbo, of course, delivers. Here are a few ways 72andSunny—and other companies—take advantage of setting up shop in Brooklyn.