Rutan & Tucker LLP, the county’s largest law firm, has signed a deal to stay at its Costa Mesa headquarters for at least another 15 years.
The firm’s new lease, for 112,000 square feet of office space at 611 Anton Blvd., extends and expands an existing deal that was set to expire in 2009, said Mike Hornak, Rutan & Tucker managing partner.
The lease is likely to reverberate beyond Costa Me-sa.
The move takes one of the county’s largest professional services firms out of the market for space at one of six office towers being built around John Wayne Airport and in the Irvine Spectrum.
Rutan, which has about 150 lawyers and 300 employees overall in Orange County, signed a 12-year deal to stay at Pacific Arts Plaza, owned by Los Angeles-based Maguire Properties Inc. Terms weren’t disclosed.
The deal is a big win for Maguire.
Rutan had been aggressively courted by some of the area’s other office developers, which have close to 100 floors of office space coming in the next year.
The Irvine Company made a strong bid to bring the law firm to 20-40 Pacifica, its twin towers being built in the Spectrum.
The developer went as far as to set up a meeting between the law firm and Irvine Co. Chairman Donald Bren, Hornak said.
“They made us a very competitive proposal,” he said.
For more on this story, see the Nov. 20 edition of the Business Journal.
