Jones Day Consolidates Offices into Lower Manhattan

By Keith Loria, Contributing Editor

Jones Day is making a bet on Lower Manhattan. The global law firm signed a 20-year, 330,210-square-foot lease that consolidates three New York City locations onto floors 27 through 34 of Brookfield Place. It currently occupies 425,000 square feet across three separate locations: 222 E. 41 St., 605 Third Ave. and 220 E. 42 St. The move will take place in 2016.

Studley brokered the transaction, just as it had the earlier transactions.

“It’s not our grandparents’ Lower Manhattan anymore,” Mitchell Steir, Studley’s chairman & CEO, told Commercial Property Executive. “We are now bearing witness to progress that has been taking place over the last couple of years to a new migration pattern among those coming to Lower Manhattan. By moving to Brookfield Place, Jones Day will be in the heart of New York’s dramatically changed Downtown.”

Located at 250 Vesey St., on the Hudson River waterfront, the Brookfield Office Properties-owned Brookfield Place, which until recently was known as the World Financial Center, offers 7 million square feet of office space within four glass towers. The property and its grand centerpiece, the 10-story glass pavilion Winter Garden, features extensive public spaces, dozens of shops and restaurants, and a stunning outdoor waterfront esplanade.

According to Steir, the premium space allows Jones Day to occupy eight contiguous floors at the top of the complex and provides access to ample amenities, transportation and housing. A new transportation hub scheduled to open in 2015 will be the only transit center in New York that will have access to the other four boroughs.

“Jones Day is leasing the top of what was the old 4 World Financial Center, so they have top of the house space in a magnificent, new, renovated project in one of the more exciting neighborhoods in Manhattan,” Steir said. “Plus all the retail at their disposal that any tenant would want.”

Steir, along with Studley executive vice president David Goldstein, executive vice president Matthew Barlow, corporate managing director Jason Perla and senior vice president L. Stanton Towne, represented Jones Day in the leasing transaction. Jerry Larkin and David Cheikin of Brookfield Office Properties represented the landlord.