Employee Benefit Solutions Inc. signed a 10-year lease for 19,855 sf of class A office space on the 25th floor of the 490,152-sf tower. It will move into the space in April. The firm, now occupying about 9,900 sf on the ninth floor, renewed its lease about 12 months early to get the penthouse at 2700 Post Oak Blvd., says Chip Colvill of Colvill Office Properties. He represented the building owner, Walton Houston Galleria Office LP, an affiliate of Walton Street Capital LLC of Chicago.

Colvill tells GlobeSt.com that the 25th floor previously was leased to a dot-com firm that never took occupancy of the space although it continued to pay rent. "A lot of folks kept coming to us wanting to lease the penthouse so we terminated the lease with the dot-com to free up the space," Colvill says. "It was a complicated deal in that respect."

The Employee Benefit Solutions lease brings Galleria Tower I to an 85% occupancy. The tower's quoted rent is $21 per sf. Scot Ison of Axis Property Advisors represented Employee Benefit Solutions, which will have about 80 employees in the expanded office. According to Ison, the relocation allows a office redesign aimed at gaining space efficiency.