The law firm Seeger Weiss LLP has signed a deal for 21,500 square feet at 77 Water Street, a building in lower Manhattan that has drawn a succession of tenants in recent months with bargain rents and generous incentives.
Seeger Weiss, a trial litigation firm that specializes in representing plaintiffs in mass tort cases and class action suits, will be relocating from 1 William Street where it has had its headquarters for over a decade.
Stephen Weiss, one of Seeger Weiss’s founding partners, said that the firm had expanded during its tenancy in 1 William, but that its options were limited in part because the roughly 100,000 square foot building is owned and nearly fully occupied by the Milan based bank Banca Intesa.
The firm, which is the only tenant other than Banca Intesa in the property, eventually squeezed onto about 17,500 square feet on two floors. Although the firm will be tacking on additional square footage in the relocation, Weiss said that he took the space at 77 Water more to accommodate the firm’s current operations than give it room to add more lawyers.
Weiss also said that being on one floor was preferable. At 1 William, Seeger Weiss split its space between the fifth and tenth floors.
“Every time one of our employees needed to visit another person in the firm they would have to go use an elevator,” Weiss said. “At a certain point, the building no longer fit our needs.”
At 77 Water, Seeger Weiss will take the bulk of the building’s top floor, the 26th, which is about 25,300 square feet in total. Weiss said that the company received a generous work letter in the deal and will build a custom office installation in the space, significantly upgrading its facilities from its current location.
“When we first came to 1 William, it was at the dawn of the digital age so the space was never outfitted from the start with the kind of infrastructure we’ll be getting in this new office,” Weiss said.
The financial firm Goldman Sachs leased all of 77 Water’s 600,000 square feet years ago but never ended up occupying the space, especially now that it has a brand new two million square foot headquarters at 200 West Street in which to consolidate its downtown operations. Instead, the company decided to sublease the space, substantially upgrading the building by installing a new lobby and pricing the space at rates aimed to move.
Weiss wouldn’t discuss the financial terms of his deal at the building but sources say that the firm likely received rents in the low $30s per square foot. In recent months, Goldman was also handing out work allowances to tenants, an incentive landlords provide to help cover the cost of outfitting a space with a custom office installation, as high as $85 per square foot, what is considered a generous contribution.
The combination of low rents, quality space and aggressive incentives has made 77 Water one of the Financial District’s most compelling bargains according to real estate experts and a draw even at a time when leasing activity has fallen.
Late last year, AT&T for instance agreed to take 120,000 square feet in the tower in a move from 32 Avenue of the Americas. Another tenant United Healthcare took 50,000 square feet around the same time and One Beacon, an insurance firm, renewed and expanded its space in the building in a roughly 25,000 square foot lease.
In the deal with Seeger Weiss, the law firm was represented by Craig Reicher, a vice chairman at the real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis. 77 Water is represented by an agency team from the firm Cushman & Wakefield, led by company executives Robert Constable, Louis D’Avanzo, Marc Packman and Joseph Fabrizi.
Seeger Weiss’s deal stretches for roughly 8 years according to Weiss, the length of the remaining term on Goldman Sachs’s lease. After that, leasing in the building will fall back into the hands of the building’s landlord and developer, the Kaufman Organization.