D&D EXCLUSIVE
By ALEX PHILIPPIDIS :: January 14, 2007

Wachtell Lipton, Colliers ABR confirm 54,000 sq. ft. lease at 55 Church St.:
Disaster recovery space for law firm

Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, one of the nation’s premiere “white shoe” law firms, will move this summer into 54,000 square feet at 55 Church St. in downtown White Plains, the firm and leasing agent Colliers ABR confirmed Friday.

Wachtell Lipton will occupy the third and fourth floors and all penthouses of the 100,000-square-foot building as a disaster recovery site that would be activated in case an emergency forces the shutdown of the firm’s Manhattan offices at 51 West 52 St.

“We don’t currently plan to have anybody stationed in White Plains,” said Meyer G. Koplow, a partner with Wachtell Lipton.

Koplow said Wachtell Lipton plans to move into its new space in June.

The firm searched sites in Westchester, New Jersey and Connecticut before concluding 55 Church St. offered the convenience to transportation it sought.

“It was a combination of the transportation facilities, proximity to the city but not too proximate to the city, the location of adequate support facilities in the immediate neighborhood of the space, and the suitability of the space itself,” Koplow said.

Wachtell Lipton specializes in mergers and acquisitions and corporate and securities law. The firm has drawn dozens of top-flight corporate clients – including Goldman Sachs in several transactions, The Walt Disney Co. in its successful fight against a hostile offer from Comcast, AT&T Wireless in its $40.7 billion acquisition by Cingular, and Caremark in its $22 billion merger with CVS Pharmacy Inc.

One of the firm’s founding partners, Martin Lipton, developed the “poison pill” defense used by corporations seeking to ward off hostile takeovers by investors.

Wachtell Lipton currently has about 210 attorneys, Koplow said. The firm ranked 49th in The American Lawyer’s 2006 AmLaw 100 list of top 100 law firms, based on reported revenues the previous year of $443 million, and has long ranked first in revenue per lawyer.

A COUP FOR COLLIERS, MINSKOFF GRANT

The signing of Wachtell Lipton to a 15-year lease was a coup for 55 Church St., its leasing agent Colliers ABR Inc., and its owner Minskoff Grant Realty and Management Corp. of New York City.

Minskoff Grant was represented in the deal by Jonathan Schindler and Michael Norris, both managing directors with Colliers ABR. Howard Nottingham and Allyson Bowen, both of Studley Inc., represented Wachtell Lipton.

“It was a challenging set of negotiations, but it got done. That’s the important thing,” said Francis (T) Grant, chief executive officer of Minskoff Grant.

Over the past decade, 55 Church St. struggled to draw new tenants despite several attempts to reposition the property.

After the early ‘90s recession thinned out the building's tenant roster, leaving almost entirely state government agencies, Minskoff Grant completed a $6 million renovation and by 1999 began promoting 55 Church to technology businesses seeking to house equipment. That effort scored the building’s sole big corporate tenant till now -- Qwest Communications International Inc., which stores equipment for its fiber-optic network within 25,000 square feet on the ground floor.

Minskoff Grant hoped to cash in on the dot-com boom, only to fail as the industry crashed in 2000. Since then the owner and previous leasing agents continued marketing the building, only to lag behind three office sites within two blocks -- two top-dollar class A properties, Reckson Metro Center at 360 Hamilton Ave. and White Plains Plaza, the two-building campus owned by Heyman Properties; and the Renaissance Corporate Center at 235-245 Main St. owned by father-and-son developers Steven and Josh Caspi.

Farther out within the downtown, two other office buildings with large blocks of empty space have lured their own new tenants -- Gateway at 1 North Lexington Ave. and Westchester One at 44 South Broadway. By next year Valhalla builder Louis R. Cappelli will complete his $450 million Renaissance Square project, which includes 70,000 square feet of downtown office space as well as a 123-room Ritz-Carlton hotel and 213 Ritz-Carlton branded “residences.”

Early last year with occupancy at only 20 percent and Colliers ABR as new leasing agent, 55 Church began creating pre-built suites of between 2,000 and 3,500 square feet space on the second floor, ready for tenants to install phone and computer service, move in furniture and open for business.

“If that was the way we had to go, that’s the way we were going to go. I really figured that somebody was going to come form out of town and take that space. And that’s exactly what happened,” Grant said.

Founded in 1908, Minskoff Grant is the successor entity to the Minskoff Organization, founded by Samuel Minskoff.  Minskoff Grant owns and manages 1 million square feet of office and retail space within 17 properties in Westchester, Manhattan, Queens, and even downtown Detroit.

Qwest shrinks, new retail available

Grant said Qwest will shrink its ground-floor space to 11,000 square feet, allowing Colliers ABR and Minskoff Grant to market two new blocks of street retail space totaling 14,000 square feet. Minskoff Grant will gauge the market before setting an asking price.

Previous retail tenants have included Colony Flower Shop (after the old Colony movie theater on Mamaroneck Avenue gave way to Rockbottom, now Duane Reade) and Hamilton Coffee Shop.

OFFICE AVAILABLE, TOO

Just 7,000 square feet of office space set to be built out in the next couple of months is available on the second floor of 55 Church, Grant said. Asking rent is the mid-$20s per square foot, plus a $40 work letter.

NO MORE MYSTERY

Word of a large lease deal involving a Manhattan law firm circulated among local brokers for months, and even got reported in the Business Journal. During that time Colliers ABR and Minskoff Grant succeeded in keeping the firm’s name confidential.
Wachtell Lipton’s identity became known Tuesday after Cushman & Wakefield included it in its list of “significant” lease deals of 2006 distributed to brokers and reporters at the brokerage firm’s Jan. 9 luncheon.