Philadelphia-based law firm Blank Rome, which last year acquired struggling D.C.-based law shop Dickstein Shapiro, is in advanced talks to lease roughly 130,000 square feet at the Rockefeller Group’s 1271 Sixth Avenue.
The potential deal is still a few months out, but Blank Rome is negotiating to lease three floors at the 2.1 million-square-foot former Time & Life building, sources told The Real Deal. The law firm is also said to be considering Cohen Brothers Realty’s 805 Third Avenue, but leaning toward the Rockefeller Group tower.
A representative for Blank Rome couldn’t be immediately reached, and a spokesperson for the Rockefeller Group declined to comment.
If the deal goes through, it would be another in a flurry of recent activity at the 48-story building, which is undergoing a $600 million redevelopment that will replace the 1959 tower’s façade with a new curtain wall.
Asking rents in the building are in the $70s to $80s per square foot in the base and mid-rise floors.
Last month, Mizuho Americas, the stateside arm of Japanese bank Mizuho Financial Group, inked a deal for 270,000 square feet in the building, the New York Post reported, which was on top of the 141,000 square feet it leased at the tower earlier this year.
Major League Baseball inked one of 2016’s biggest leases when it signed a deal for 400,000 square feet in the building – the first major lease following the tower’s redevelopment plans – though at some point it gave one full floor spanning some 75,000 square feet back to the landlord, as TRD originally reported.
Blank Rome’s New York City offices are in Tishman Speyer’s Chrysler Building at 405 Lexington Avenue. The firm, founded in 1946, was up until the new millennium considered primarily a regional Philadelphia firm, but over the years has expanded to become a top-tier national firm with an office in China as well.
Early last year, the company merged with Washington, D.C.-based Dickstein Shapiro, which had a New York office at Paramount Group’s 1633 Broadway. Dickstein Shapiro’s 13 New York City attorneys reportedly moved into the Chrysler Building following the merger.