Paratte tells GlobeSt.com the law firm's commitment brings the 482,000-sf office portion of 405 Howard to 57% leased. “What's misleading about this market is that although it has a 20%-plus vacancy rate, it is not the quality upper-floor spaces that are vacant,” says Paratte. “The best space in the city probably has a vacancy rate of 10%.”

A principal with Orrick Herrington and Sutcliffe could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon. Arabian tells GlobeSt.com that the law firm has been in its current location for 17 years and that 405 Howard represented an opportunity for the firm to start with a shell and design a forward-looking layout for its lawyers. “They've got a clean slate in a building with a lot of natural light,” Arabian tells GlobeSt.com.

As for leasing the rest of the South Financial District building, Paratte says the market is at the end of one leasing cycle and hopefully about to start the next. “A lot of the leasing we've done to get to 57% really started about this time last year and took this long to come to fruition,” he says. “Hopefully the next cycle is ready to start, but the uncertainty of war makes it a little bit unpredictable.”

Wilson Meany Sullivan is a real estate investment firm that specializes in developing mixed-use projects office, residential and retail project. The CAC Group is the city's top office leasing brokerage; its brokers hold exclusive listing assignments for 2.6 million sf of vacant space — 12% of all vacant space in the city.

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe is a full-service, law firm that began in San Francisco more than 136 years ago. The firm now has 650 lawyers and offices in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, Menlo Park, Irvine, London, Paris and Tokyo.

Equity Office Properties Trust is the nation's largest office building owner and manager, with more than 700 properties comprising 126 million sf of office space in the country's major metropolitan markets.