Palmieri, Tyler, Wiener, Wilhelm & Waldron LLP is the latest local law firm that’s figuring out how to use less space for its operations.
The Irvine-based firm, Orange County’s 24th largest by lawyer count with 36 local attorneys, recently signed a deal to move its headquarters to 1900 Main St., an eight-story office building a few blocks from John Wayne Airport.
The deal runs about 28,275 square feet at the 172,250-square-foot building, which is at the intersection of Main Street and MacArthur Boulevard and is owned by Portland, Ore.-based Terrace Tower Group LLP.
Randall Parker and Steve Card, former partners at Travers Realty who recently moved to the Newport Beach office of Cresa Partners, brokered the lease.
Palmieri, Tyler will move in August from the Century Centre office complex about half a mile away, according to Dennis Ghan, a partner with the firm, which leases about 34,000 square feet at the office it has called home for more than 20 years.
The new space offers the firm the ability to “right-size our operations,” Ghan said. “We’ll be able to have all our attorneys on one floor, as well as a nice conference center.”
Law firms leased close to 850 square feet of office space per lawyer in the 1980s. That dropped to about 750 square feet per lawyer in the 1990s. Now firms are averaging 550 to 650 square feet per attorney amid shrinking libraries, fewer support staff per attorney, and electronic storage replacement of paper files, among other changes, according to data from Cresa Partners’ Parker, who represents a number of local law firms in their lease negotiations.
Palmieri, Tyler had 73 local employees, including attorneys, as of January, according to Business Journal data.
Its practice areas include business litigation, real estate, corporate and securities, and wealth management. The firm said it also has one of the largest eminent domain practices in Orange County.
“Last year was our best ever,” Ghan said, referring to the firm’s overall business.
Other notable large firms at the 1900 Main building include Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP, OC’s 14th-largest law firm.
Greenlaw Investment
Greenlaw Partners in Irvine has bought a two-building office complex in San Dimas that previously held the headquarters of WesCorp Credit Union.
The real estate investment firm partnered with Chicago-based Walton Street Capital LLC to buy the buildings, which total about 176,000 square feet and are near the intersection of the Orange (57) and Foothill (210) freeways.
The deal, which includes 2 acres of vacant land that could be developed, sold for about $18 million, or about $102 per square foot.
The buildings sit on Overland Court and were vacant at the time of the sale.
WesCorp, once the largest credit union in the country, was taken over by regulators in 2009 after losing nearly $9 billion related to its investments in mortgage-backed securities. It was officially dissolved in 2012.
The property was sold by the National Credit Union Association, a federal agency that supervises federal credit unions.
AmScope Moves
United Scope LLC in Irvine, an online supplier of microscopes and accessories, has relocated to a building not far from The Marketplace shopping center.
The company, which also operates under the AmScope name, recently moved to 14370 Myford Road, a 100,152-square-foot industrial building owned by the Irvine Company.
United Scope is subleasing about half the building from Irvine-based apparel licensing company La Jolla Group LLC.
The new location doubles the space United Scope occupied at its prior site in the Irvine Spectrum.
Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s Byron Foss, Wade Tift, and Nick Carey represented United Scope, and CBRE Group Inc.’s Gregg Haley and Chip Wright represented La Jolla Group in the sublease transaction.
