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Situation
● Facing the expiration of its 13+ year lease in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, Lowenstein
Sandler LLP (Lowenstein), a New Jersey-based multi-disciplined law firm, engaged Philip Weiss
as their exclusive broker to advise the firm to identify, analyze and evaluate alternative midtown
office buildings for their growing business needs.
● Lowenstein had experienced exponential growth from 59,000 square feet to 101,000-square-
feet over the term of its lease. Based on historic growth models, the firm’s future requirement
would expand to 125,000 square feet.
Insights
● As the office legal workplace has evolved over the years, adaptive re-use of older premises
were not good solutions because it did not address today’s design criteria that maximizes
recruitment potential of new professionals and incorporation of the latest state-of-the-art
technologies.
● The need for “universal” offices and abundant amenity support facilities necessitated a
detailed-driven process that included multiple negotiations, financial analysis, technological
evaluations and construction assessments that focused a flexible, properly-timed holistic
solution.
 
Operational Solution
A 15-year base case alternative was developed, which was the expansion and renewal of the
current premises that would require the staged reconstruction of the current space over a period
of 18-24 months. Aware that Lowenstein would be comparing the current premises, to other
property alternatives, the base case as well as other buildings options was structured as “new”
transactions, with market TI allowances and other concessions and commencing after
Lowenstein’s current lease expiration date thereby providing “true” free rent to Lowenstein.

Resources Applied
A team of professionals (in-house as well as outside consultants) was assembled to provide the
needed financial consulting, architectural planning, market research and market forecasting of
market-drivers and rents. We also provided comparative financial analyses of alternative
occupancy scenarios, district and submarket analysis reports, and demographic studies of
employee commutation times, project scheduling and project management consulting.

Enterprise Impact
Planning for unimaginable events is the hallmark of a flexible, well-crafted “timeless” solution. No
one could have predicted a-once-in-a-100-year event taking place and the global pandemic of
2019-22, which was just such an event. As the final negotiations were unfolding in March 2020
New York City was shutdown. By taking advantage of the weakened Landlord’s position, we
were able to significantly improve the terms of the transaction by increasing the concessions by
approximately 15%. In addition, we were able to develop and implement a program of staged
expansion spaces by staggering fully built/furnished subleases to offset the cost-of-carry of the
growth spaces until needed by the firm. Overall the transaction provided great operating
flexibility and saved the firm tens of millions of dollars over the term of the lease