WASHINGTON, DC—White & Case has renewed its lease at One Metro Center for 148,613-square feet. The law firm will reconfigure its operations in the 421,235-square foot building's top two floors for greater operational efficiencies. CBRE arranged the lease on behalf of the building owner Jamestown LP.
The deal closed well in advance of White & Case's lease expiration in part because of the eagerness of the landlord to close the deal as the building is coming up on its first lease rollover since its delivery in 2003, CBRE's Randy Harrell tells GlobeSt.com.
Harrell along with Kevin Howard, Joe Coleman, and Melissa Byrd of CBRE negotiated the renewal. White & Case, LLP was represented by Tom Doughty and Greg McCavera of JLL.
Increasingly law firms are willing to 'configure in place' instead of moving to new buildings as their leases expire, Harrell says—in large part because landlords have come to realize that these firms are willing to up and move to a better location if necessary.
"Those landlords that have been successful in keeping tenants have been readily agreeable to making upgrades to existing infrastructure in order to compete with newer product," he says.
That was the back story to Morgan, Lewis & Bockius' reupping the 268,000-square feet it occupies at 1111 Pennsylvania Ave. last month. The lease renewal included agreements by landlord Invesco Real Estate to make improvements to the building's systems as well as other upgrades and modernizations. CBRE's Harrell and Howard represented Invesco in the negotiations of the long-term lease.
Of course there are always firms that will move on to better space or a better deal. Such an example was provided, also in September, by Venable, which announced it will occupy 245,000 square feet at 600 Massachusetts Ave., NW, a newly-constructed office tower by Gould Property Co. and Oxford Properties.
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Erika Morphy
Erika Morphy has been writing about commercial real estate at GlobeSt.com for more than ten years, covering the capital markets, the Mid-Atlantic region and national topics. She's a nerd so favorite examples of the former include accounting standards, Basel III and what Congress is brewing.
