Bryan Cave LLP is laying the groundwork for a big expansion in Orange County.
The business and litigation firm just signed one of the larger office leases for a local law firm,or any OC professional services firm, for that matter,as of late.
Bryan Cave signed on to take nearly two floors of space at Maguire Properties Inc.’s new 3161 Michelson office tower in Irvine. It will be moving into the offices at Maguire’s Park Place campus in mid-2008.
It’s the third big law firm that Maguire’s brought on as a tenant at 3161 Michelson, the $244 million office tower that opened its doors last year.
The 12-year lease is for 48,000 square feet, and represents a more than doubling in space for Bryan Cave, which ranked No. 24 on this week’s Business Journal of the top law firms here.
St. Louis-based Bryan Cave counts 32 lawyers locally, up from 23 a year ago. It has a total of about 65 employees in Irvine. Worldwide, it counts some 800 attorneys
at 15 offices.
The goal is to build the Irvine practice up to more than 50 lawyers in the next few years, according to Ren Hayhurst, managing partner for the Irvine office of Bryan Cave.
The growth “won’t be immediate. But when we started to figure out where we fit (locally), over the next two years, we saw the need for the extra space,” Hayhurst said.
If it adds that many lawyers, Bryan Cave could come close to the top 10 local firms in the county.
Some of that growth will be from the firm’s core practices, including corporate litigation and banking.
Bryan Cave’s also building up some newer lines of business, including environmental work, class action litigation, and product liability work for the aviation industry, according to Hayhurst.
The Orange County office counts a client base that’s heavy on entrepreneurs and is nationally focused, particularly in comparison to Bryan Cave’s Los Angeles office, which focuses on local entertainment-related clients, and counts about 70 attorneys.
Despite the national slowdown, the Irvine office’s real estate practice also is thriving, said Hayhurst, a former trial attorney who now represents real estate clients.
“We’re looking to add a couple real estate partners with land development expertise,”
he said.
The firm’s been doing a lot of development work in Texas, Ohio, Florida and the Pacific Northwest, he said.
The decision to move to the Maguire building came about relatively quickly, according to Hayhurst.
Negotiations with the landlord took about three weeks, he said.
Bryan Cave had been occupying about 23,000 square feet at 1900 Main St. in Irvine. The firm had been at that location the past 27 years, according to officials with brokerage Studley Inc., which advised Bryan Cave in the transaction.
There was little extra room for expansion at the existing building, which also counts the local office of Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP as a tenant.
The law firm looked at a few of the other new towers going up in Irvine, before choosing its new location.
“We felt the Maguire building was something unique to Orange County,” Hayhurst said. “It reminded us of buildings in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles or Chicago.”
The firm’s planning to move in by May or June.
A decision on which tenant improvement contractor will be building out the firm’s office space should be decided in a few weeks, he said.
Most brokers say that for new buildings where a shell needs to be completely built out, a tenant should factor in a minimum of six months to sign a lease and prepare for a move.
That timeframe factors in two weeks for drawing up plans, two to four weeks of negotiations with the landlord, two weeks for getting permits with the city, and about two months for build-out.
Bryan Cave is the second-biggest tenant Maguire has signed for 3161 Michelson, the 530,000-square-foot Irvine tower that sits along Jamboree Road and the San Diego (I-405) Freeway, near John Wayne Airport.
Three tenants have been announced for the building, all law firms.
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in 2005 announced an 80,000-square-foot lease at the building prior to construction beginning. The Los Angeles-based law firm, the sixth largest here, moved from The Irvine Company’s Jamboree Center.
Last May, Maguire also signed a deal with Greenberg Traurig LLP, No. 21 on this week’s Business Journal list.
Greenberg Traurig signed a 15-year lease for 38,207 square feet. The Miami-based firm is moving from offices near South Coast Plaza. Maguire’s building now is about a third leased up. It would be closer to two-thirds full, but the landlord lost anchor tenant New Century Financial Corp. last year, following the subprime lender’s well-publicized bankruptcy.
Irvine-based New Century had planned to take up 190,000 square feet of space, and was set to take up the top floors of the 20-story building. The top floors still are available.
Along with internal staff, Bryan Cave was represented by Arlene Sommer of Studley’s West Los Angeles office, and Royce Sharf, Bruce Schuman and Michael Props of the brokerage’s Irvine office.
