MIAMI-The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation renewed its nearly 23,000 square-foot lease at the 1.2 million-square-foot Wachovia Financial Center in downtown, the largest Class A office building in South Florida.

The Knight Foundation renewal comes at a time when Wachovia Financial is facing competition from two new buildings in downtown and Brickell--the 750,000-square-foot Wells Fargo Center across the street, which just lured away major tenant Deloitte, which moved into 50,000 square feet at the building, and the nearly 585,000-square-foot 1450 Brickell building less than a mile to the south. One other major tenant at Wachovia Financial, the law firm Bilzin Sumberg, will be moving out in the next six months.

The Knight Foundation, a training and advocacy organization for journalism and the arts, will continue to occupy a full floor at Wachovia Financial. It didn’t need to shrink or grow, says Jack Lowell, vice president at Flagler Real Estate Services, LLC, who represented the Knight Foundation in lease negotiations and who is also the leasing agent for the Wells Fargo Center. Usually what drives tenants out of buildings is the inability to grow or reconfigure their space, he says.

“We looked at the market and considered buying a building or going into a condo office building,” says Lowell. “It was a complicated deal,” he says. “There was a restructuring of the existing lease which had three years to go. It was extended for seven more years, making it a ten year lease,” says Lowell. The lease which was restructured had originally been a ten-year lease.

 While not actually saying that the new lease has a lower rent than the one it replaced, Lowell says that  “the Wachovia building is meeting the market in terms of price,” and that his client  “got a very competitive economic package, including funds for remodeling.”

The current occupancy for the Wachovia Financial Center is 93%, a number which reflects the departure of Deloitte, says Don Cartwright, leasing director at the Wachovia Financial Center, although it includes Bilzin Sumberg which is leaving in January.

“We are working on proposals to backfill the space,” left by departing tenants, says Cartwright, and, in fact, the building has signed a few leases in June and early July, including one for the University of Manchester from the UK, which is leasing 3,300 square feet for its executive MBA program. Also, Servcorp, a global company which provides virtual offices and executive office suites, is taking 4,995 square feet and Guy Carpenter, a division of Marsh McLennan, renewed its 15,403-square-foot lease, says Cartwright.

Besides, says Cartwright, the Wachovia Financial Center is almost the same size as the two new buildings in downtown and Brickell combined. Even after Bilzin Sumberg moves out, the building will still have over one million square feet of occupied space, he says.