"This is further validation of the Back Bay market," Bill Motley, with Jones Lang LaSalle's Boston office, tells GlobeSt.com. He notes that the lease will strengthen the office market and drive up rents throughout the neighborhood.
David Begelfer, head of the Boston chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, tells GlobeSt.com that the arrangement also should prove to be an opportunity for One International Place, which will lose one of its largest tenants when the law firm vacates its current 380,000-sf offices. Ropes & Gray has been a tenant in that building since 1989.
"One International Place has had bragging rights for getting top dollar and the reason for that is because of its top location," Begelfer says. "While the space may not be filled by one tenant, it presents some great opportunities to market that space to smaller tenants at rents that could be substantially better."
Ropes & Gray will take up to 15 floors, or about one third of the 52-story building, when it moves into the Prudential Tower in 2010, a spokesman for the firm tells GlobeSt.com. The agreement would make the legal firm the Prudential Tower's largest tenant.
Because the firm has signed a letter of intent and not a formal lease, it remains unclear exactly where the law firm will be located but it is likely the law offices will be on the building's upper floors, the spokesman says. Some of the space will include offices that are currently leased to Gillette Co., which is moving its corporate headquarters to its South Boston facility, he says. As GlobeSt.com reported in January, Gillette plans to vacate 375,000 sf at the Prudential Tower in the move.
The legal firm selected the Back Bay tower because of its location near restaurants, entertainment and cultural venues, and because it offered contiguous expansion space, the spokesman says. "The Prudential Tower is a prime location close to all kinds of amenities, shops and transportation and its convenient for our clients," he adds.
Terms of the lease were not disclosed but class A office space in the Back Bay generally leases in the $45 to $55 per sf range, according to market reports.
A spokeswoman for Boston Properties, the Prudential Building's owner, did not return calls from GlobeSt.com in time for deadline.
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