White & Case expands to nearly 500K sf at Rockefeller’s 1221 Sixth

Law firm takes another 49K sf floor

1221 Sixth Avenue (Credit: Cushman and Wakefield)
1221 Sixth Avenue (Credit: Cushman and Wakefield)

Law firm White & Case is expanding at Rockefeller Group’s 1221 Sixth Avenue by 49,000 square feet, bringing its footprint at the former McGraw Hill building to just shy of half a million square feet.

The law firm inked a deal to take another full floor at Rockefeller’s 2.2 million-square-foot tower after first signing a lease to move there four years ago, the landlord announced.

White & Case signed a lease in 2014 to take 440,000 square feet in the building between West 48th and West 49th streets, relocating from the Durst Organization’s 1155 Sixth Avenue.

The new deal brings the law firm’s footprint to 489,000 square feet in the building.

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JLL’s Ken Siegel, Tom Doughty and Lisa Kiell represented White & Case in the lease. A Cushman & Wakefield team led by Robert Lowe handles leasing at the building alongside Rockefeller’s in-house team headed by leasing director Ed Guiltinan.

The Rockefeller Group completed a $50 million capital improvements program to the building in 2016. The property is now 97 percent occupied.

Leasing among law firms has been on the rise, and the Sixth Avenue submarket has captured more than half of the 4.6 million square feet firms leased over the last 18 months, according to Cushman.