Brookfield scores big legal tenant at Grace

Brookfield Office Properties has inked a 45,000-square-foot lease with intellectual property law firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton at the Grace Building, which is sure to be a pick-me-up after last week’s news that Japan’s Nomura Holdings is moving out of the company’s World Financial Center in 2013. The deal is among the largest law firm leases in the city so far this year, according to the Observer, and comes six months after Kilpatrick Stockton merged with Townsend and Townsend and Crew. The firm will be doubling its space from the 22,500 square feet it currently occupies at 31 West 52nd Street, moving into the 21st floor and part of the 22nd at the Grace Building, at 1114 Sixth Avenue, some time close to the year’s end. Brookfield still has some 3 million square feet of leases expiring at the World Financial Center in 2013. Bank of America has tentatively agreed to retain only 750,000 square feet of space there, which is less than a sixth of the space it currently occupies. [NYO]