A Law Firm Relocates after Four Decades
by Bill Puetz, CID, LEED AP

Relocating an office of 120 legal professionals is a daunting task under any circumstance. But when a law firm has been in the same space for four decades, there is even more at stake.  This was the case for our client Squire, Sanders & Dempsey that took the opportunity to address changes within the legal profession as well as to reflect upon the core values that define its culture today.

Squire Sanders, an international law firm, had outgrown its San Francisco Financial District office at One Maritime Plaza.  Attorney Thomas Woofter and Office Administrator Joan Klaassen lead the charge to plan the new space.  We had the pleasure of sitting down with them in their new offices at 275 Battery Street to look back at the process.

Bill:       What were the big changes that took place in the 37 years prior to your move?

Tom:     I would say the biggest changes are in the ways in which we now communicate and work together, both internally and externally.  Thanks to technology, more and more communication is done by e-mail and most research is done online.  As a result, we now have lesser need for extensive library space, but greater need to make and find ways and places for people to get together to share thoughts and ideas.

Joan:    Also, as a practical matter, since this generation of attorneys does more of its own work, there is less need for secretarial areas.

Bill:       How did this inform the design of your new office?

Tom:     We wanted to have an area where people could get together and collaborate.  We wanted to have spaces where we could host seminars and interact with people from outside the firm.

Bill:       There used to be segregation between partners, associates, paralegals, and secretaries.  But you chose to create a shared lounge?

Tom:     We are not as hierarchical as your typical law firm.  We wanted to have areas like the employee lounge for everyone to gather.  The intensity of a law practice is just as stressful for the staff as it is for the attorneys.

Bill:       Would you say mutual respect is part of your firm’s culture?

Tom:     We really emphasize it, and what you emphasize is what you get. It creates your environment.

Bill:       The law library is still an iconic part of your office environment, though the number of books was reduced dramatically. Who advocated for the library?

Joan:    The funny thing is it’s the younger staff who were concerned about reducing the collection.

Bill:       Are they doing more of the research?

Tom:     Yes, they are, and while they do most of their research online, in some cases they still like to have particular resources they can lay on their desks and refer to as well.

Bill:       How have the meeting spaces changed how you work?

Joan:    We are doing more of our meetings here, which we weren’t doing before.  Attorneys were holding meetings at other locations, because they didn’t want to bring clients or guests to the old space.

Tom:     Everyone likes having a conference center as opposed to having conference rooms distributed throughout the various floors.  And now, we’re letting different organizations use our space for meetings and other events.  They are nonprofits that we support or associations for select practice areas.

Bill:       You both put a lot of thought into starting the design process early.  Many things changed in the commercial real estate market since you started planning.  Why did you have such a long schedule?

Joan:    If you leave enough time, the visioning can be implemented.  I was looking through the programming documents the other day, and what we wanted is definitely what we got.

Tom:     We were able to envision what we wanted, identify space early, evaluate what could be saved and reused, and pay no double rent.

Bill:       You involved different groups in visioning and the design phase.  Were you able to engage more people internally that way?

Tom:     We discussed how to shape that process, because we wanted people to be invested.  We had to have representation among practice groups, partners, associates, and staff.  We had a good balance between letting people have a say and making sure the process moved ahead.

Bill:       My hope was that no one would recognize that the space had once belonged to another law firm. Because of your sustainability goals, we reused 60% of the existing construction. Did that limitation ever get in your way?

Tom:     I don’t think so.  We achieved what we wanted and managed to keep 60%.

Joan:    I think the space looks completely different from what it did before.

Bill:       I’ve worked on LEED projects where clients wanted to pursue certification because it’s trendy, but Squire Sanders has a longer green history.

Tom:     Through Joan’s efforts in our Palo Alto and in San Francisco offices, we adopted policies to systematically improve the sustainability of those facilities.

Bill:       Do your clients care about your carbon footprint?

Joan:    Yes. We developed materials regarding our firm-wide green initiatives that we offer when a client asks about our sustainability efforts.

Bill:       Environmental law is one of your more growing practice areas.  There’s a link between what you do internally as a firm and the services you provide in that particular practice group.  What are some initiatives your clients want to know about?

Joan:    In all of the offices, we track kilowatt usage every month.  For this office, I worked closely with the building management to collect this data since our move.

Bill:       Many clients will focus on one aspect of the project, like sustainability, but you didn’t want to omit good design or other criteria.  Can you explain why that balance was so important to the project?

Tom:     Not having moved in 37 years, this was a very important move.  Getting everything right was critical.

I think you remember my line: “We can do whatever we need to do to save existing conditions, but in the end we have to have first-class space, or I will be hung.”  That’s why we paid attention to everything.  And also Joan insisted on it.

Bill:       Although we scaled back when you needed to meet your financial objectives, were there any goals you did not meet?

Tom:     You did a good job of helping us understand what certain options would cost, and we did do away with some features that would have been nice to have.  We kept a lot, too, like the folding door in the conference center.  That is the designer’s role, to help the client understand the trade-offs.

Bill:       Tom, with all of your managing responsibilities, was it difficult to attend every meeting over the two and a half years?

Tom:     Not when there are pastries.

Joan:    I think that shows real commitment from Tom, and if it’s that important to you, what’s the best thing to do?  It’s to be there.

Tom:     One of the reasons I could be at every meeting was this was one of the last administrative responsibilities I had, and I wanted it to go well.  When I was a junior associate, I worked on a letter and couldn’t get it right.  I gave it to Sandy Calhoun, who was a senior attorney, and said “wave your magic wand over this and make it better.”  And he said “there is no magic wand, you just have to keep rewriting it.”

Whenever you are involved in a project, you want it to be a success.  When it’s not a success, it doesn’t matter whether it’s your fault or not.  Even if you’ve done a good job, it has to be a success for everybody.  And this project was more than a success. ◙

Part One: San Francisco
by Sascha Wagner, IIDA CID LEED AP
swagner@huntsmanag.com

During economic downturns, competition among building owners for office tenants usually becomes fierce. It’s a function of simple math: More properties are competing for fewer tenants. Down-cycles in the market can be an opportunity for building owners to take advantage of lower construction costs and improve their properties with the aim of attracting high quality tenants. However, the challenge is to make the right moves to meet the needs of the leasing market, taking into account the building’s location, amenities, floor plans, as well as its competitors. While tenants may be looking for serious bargains in the current economic climate, the choice is never just about money—they are also looking for the right home for their company. Repositioning is about giving a building a lease on life – creating a new identity that will give tenants the quality and cachet they’re looking for.

Lack of maintenance can leave any commercial building looking worse for wear. But even well-designed and maintained buildings can begin to appear dated over time. Take the case of San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center West at 275 Battery Street. Designed by John Portman in the 1980s as an extension of Embarcadero Center, the high-rise’s public spaces had lost some of their original elegance with the passage of time. Recent vacancies on multiple floors created opportunities for the owners to lease large swaths of space. However, a bit of a makeover was required. Making the building attractive to contemporary tenants—with the legal profession particularly in mind—involved remodeling the lobby, elevator cabs, and elevator lobbies to give the building a modern, unified visual identity.

In other cases, the building may never have had a strong visual identity – perhaps due to local adjacency planning criteria – which can provide an opportunity to create one. 100 Van Ness was built in the 1980s as a slab-style high-rise with a fairly nondescript character. It’s currently undergoing a repositioning effort that involves transforming the building lobbies and elevators. In this case, the main entrance lobby is being “pulled outside” to make a visual statement on an otherwise blank exterior.

Real estate brokers play a key role in working with building owners to reposition buildings – not only helping refine the target market, but also advising whether the floor plates are the right size or offer the right flexibility for the desired tenant group. Sometimes architectural interventions are necessary to adapt the structure. 123 Townsend (The Townsend Building), a historic building in San Francisco’s multimedia gulch, has 21,000-square-foot floor plates that were served by only two staircases. In repositioning the building, the design team collaborated with the brokers and proposed adding a third stair, which would enable the floor plates to be divided into thirds. Each floor can now be leased in 7,000-, 14,000-, or 21,000-square-foot blocks. This added flexibility for future growth was appealing to the targeted audience of young technology companies just starting out—they could begin with a 7,000-square-foot piece and expand in increments as their business grew. Upgrading the building’s capacity to handle significant technology infrastructure, and remodeling the lobbies were also part of the effort. After the repositioning, the brokers leased the entire building to multiple tenants within a year.

Developing a long-term plan for adding green design elements to a building can go a long way toward attracting tenants in the technology creative fields, for whom sustainability is often a significant part of their identity. The repositioning of 634 Second Street involved the development of sustainability criteria and a long-term strategy for meeting LEED for Existing Buildings requirements, as well as remodeling part of the façade, adding a new passenger elevator and roof deck, and upgrading the lighting, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing systems. With these new features added, ServiceSource, a service performance management company, leased all three floors. Other sustainable strategies that can make buildings stand out include bicycle parking areas and sub-metering for electricity, which allows each tenant to reap the benefits of their own energy conservation measures.

Repositioning does not have to be comprehensive or expensive. Instead of replacing the stone in a lobby, for example, adding area rugs, draperies, and new signage and directories can provide a fresh look. Perhaps the guard desk can be resurfaced instead of replaced. Installing new energy-efficient bulbs can reduce electricity consumption and offer improved lighting quality at a fraction of the cost of replacing entire light fixtures. In some cases, costs for systems upgrades can even be rolled into ongoing maintenance budgets. Regardless of the scope of upgrades, any repositioning effort should be done strategically and with expert advice. Getting a building filled with tenants by spending money on improvements can certainly be seen as a chicken-and-egg scenario. But spending money wisely can pay big dividends down the road.

Part Two of “Repositioning the Commercial Office Building” will look at some specific repositionings in New York.

Sascha Wagner, IIDA CID LEED AP is a Principal at Huntsman Architectural Group and has assisted building owners and real estate developers with building repositioning projects in the Bay Area.