Law firm Kirkland & Ellis, which inked a lease for 115,000 square feet on six floors at 830 Brickell in one of the biggest new-to-market office deals in South Florida last year, is subleasing a portion of its space, The Real Deal has learned.
The move at the planned tower, a top choice for major tenants, comes amid signs of a South Florida office slowdown.
The 13,100-square-foot 14th floor and the 14,400-square-foot 15th floor at the nearly completed building at 830 Brickell Plaza in Miami’s financial district are available, according to a brochure by Newmark, which is marketing the space for sublease. Sources identified Kirkland & Ellis as the tenant putting the space up for sublease.
The 14th and 15th floors are disconnected from the firm’s four other floors that are much higher in the tower, creating an inefficiency at the lower-level space, the sources said.
Ryan Rosalsky and Mitchell Millowitz, the Newmark brokers marketing the space for sublease, didn’t return a request for comment. Rosalsky and Millowitz were part of the team that represented Kirkland & Ellis in its 830 Brickell lease last year.
Kirkland & Ellis, as well as 830 Brickell’s developers and the Cushman & Wakefield brokers who represent the landlords in leasing out the tower, declined comment.
OKO Group, led by Vlad Doronin, and Cain International, led by Jonathan Goldstein, are developing the 55-story 830 Brickell that will bring 640,000 square feet of offices once finished this year.
The fully leased project emerged as a beacon during the office boom of the past two years by scoring the biggest new-to-market deals.
The sublease availability comes amid a general South Florida office leasing market slowdown.
Longtime local firms are downsizing to accommodate the growth of hybrid work and work-from-home. In addition, the tri-county region has failed to score deals above $60 per square foot in effective rent so far this year, marking a turnaround from last year when out-of-state firms signed deals above $80 a foot in effective rent, according to CompStak, a crowdsourced deals database. Effective rent represents how much landlords receive after concessions.
Jeremy Larkin, an NAI broker in Miami not involved with 830 Brickell, said he was “stunned” to see the sublease.
“The only thing I can say is it may be a larger organization that took the space for anticipated growth for the next 10 years, so they can have control of it, and then [are] subleasing it out so they can offset the cost,” Larkin said, though he didn’t know which tenant made the space available.
Other tenants at 830 Brickell include private equity firm Thoma Bravo, Microsoft, insurance and financial firm A-CAP, Canadian asset manager CI Financial, Marsh & McLennan Companies’ insurance arm, Marsh. Law firms Winston & Strawn and Baker McKenzie took a combined 53,000 square feet, and financial services firm Rothschild & Co. leased 5,000 square feet.
Billionaire hedge funder Ken Griffin’s Citadel, which along with financial services firm Citadel Securities, moved its headquarters to Miami from Chicago, took about 95,000 square feet at 830 Brickell.
Designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, 830 Brickell will be the first standalone office tower in Miami in a decade.
Nearby, Swire Properties and Stephen Ross’ Related Companies plan One Brickell City Centre, a supertall office tower. It aims to be the tallest commercial tower in the state, rising nearly 1,000 feet at 700 Brickell Avenue and 799 Brickell Plaza. It will be part of the Brickell City Centre mixed-use complex developed by Swire.