7 Times Square tower gets tenant.This week brought what must be a bittersweet bittersweet, name for two unrelated plants, belonging to different families, both fall-fruiting woody vines sometimes cultivated for their decorative scarlet berries. success for Boston Properties Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE: BXP) is a self-managed real estate investment trust (REIT) based in Boston, Massachusetts. Its primary focus is "Class A" office space which it acquires, develops, and manages in the major markets of Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C. -- O'Melveny & Myers LLP LLP - Lower Layer Protocol , a Los Angeles-based law firm, has signed a 206,000-SF lease at its new building at 7 Times Square. The bitter part, however, is that Boston still hasn't recouped the 400,000 SF lease agreement it had with the accounting firm Arthur Andersen For the U.S. Supreme Court case commonly known as Arthur Andersen, see . Arthur Andersen LLP, based in Chicago, was once one of the "Big Five" accounting firms (the other four are PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young and KPMG), performing , for whom the building was planned. Almost from the beginning, the 48-story, 1.2 million-SF building, christened as Times Square Tower, has been plagued by bad luck. Conceived in 2000, at the height of the real estate market, it lost its only tenant with the collapse of Arthur Andersen a year later. The firm, which was supposed to serve as the anchor for the property, disintegrated in a matter of weeks as a result of the Enron scandal The Enron scandal was a financial scandal that was revealed in late 2001. After a series of revelations involving irregular accounting procedures bordering on fraud, perpetrated throughout the 1990s, involving Enron and its accounting firm Arthur Andersen, it stood at the verge of , leaving Boston in the middle of the construction process with no tenant at all. There were several unsuccessful attempts to rent the building in 2002, but O'Melveny & Myers is the only one so far to actually sign the lease. Robert Selsam, senior vice president at Boston, said that his firm is currently in negotiations with several prospective tenants, but refused to give names. "All we can say is that we are in active discussions with other firms and we won't say anything else until we have signed a lease," he said. But the truth is that even getting O'Melveny required a stroke of luck. The law firm, which has recently merged with O'Sullivan LLP, is currently a tenant at another Boston building and agreed to take space at Times Square Tower in part to get out of its existing lease. "O'Melveny used to be a tenant at Boston's City Group Center, and when they merged with O'Sullivan we made a deal to let us out of the lease early if we took space at that building," said Robert Bundy, of the Staubach Company, who represented the tenant in the transaction. "But the overriding (programming) overriding - Redefining in a child class a method or function member defined in a parent class. Not to be confused with "overloading". reason for our decision was the fact that this is a brand new building, it has very efficient floor plates, and it would allow the two different offices to merge into one new one." Bundy mentioned that he has one other client who is interested in taking about two floors at the property, but no negotiations have taken place as of yet. "Right now, the law firms This list of the world's largest law firms by revenue is taken from The Lawyer and The American Lawyer and is ordered by 2006 revenue:[1]
It's unlikely, however, that the developer will be able to get $70 per SF for the building, as was the plan in 2000. "We are optimistic op·ti·mist n. 1. One who usually expects a favorable outcome. 2. A believer in philosophical optimism. op about leasing it up, but I can't comment on the price," said Selsam. O'Melveny is scheduled to move into the building by the spring of next year. |
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