Early next year, attorneys and staff from plaintiffs' personal injury firm Brown & Crouppen will be breathing the rarefied air in Metropolitan Square, downtown St. Louis' premier office building.
Tennis-shoe clad Terry Crouppen will tread the lobby floor with attorneys from white-shoe firms Bryan Cave and Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal.
Crouppen won't be riding the same elevators, though.
Managing partner Ronald Brown signed a 10-year lease Nov. 13 for nearly 25,000 square feet on replica clothing the 16th floor, which is 20 floors below the lobby of Bryan Cave and accessed by a different elevator bank.
The 16th floor space was formerly occupied by intellectual property firm Senniger Powers, which exited for cheaper rent at the Bank of America Tower in 2008.
Brown declined to give a dollar figure for the deal, but a move set for February or March will bring Brown & Crouppen two blocks east and about $3 a square foot up in price from its current space in the Laclede Gas Building, 720 Olive St. Asking rates at 42-story Met Square, the tallest office building downtown, are $20 to $22 a square foot. Asking rates at the Laclede Gas Building are $17.50 a square foot.
The firm also will expand: Brown & Crouppen has about 18,000 square feet in the Laclede Gas Building. In addition to the 25,000 square feet it's moving into, the firm has right of first refusal to the space it's not immediately occupying on the floor, Brown said.
Domash Designsource will be the architect for the firm's renovations.
It's a buyer's market for office space, and the firm took the time to shop the whole downtown market, Brown said.
"Met Square was by far the unanimous choice," Brown said. "It's the top building downtown. It looks the part of the top building downtown, it has great facilities and we're excited about it."
However, the law firm, which advertises heavily, may not necessarily be embraced by other tenants, who might view it as changing the tenor of the building, said a broker and law firm consultant.
The increase in foot traffic and the lower-income clients brought in by Brown & Crouppen's higher-volume trade may not be welcome, said John Olmstead, president of legal management consulting firm Olmstead & Associates.
"There'll be a different kind of folks in the elevators than before," Olmstead said. "Initially there may be a negative reaction."
More foot traffic makes a building a little more "retailish," Olmstead said.
Brown dismissed that idea, however.
"I think that's so not real it sort of astounds me," Brown said. "I've been in that lobby. There are an awful lot of people walking through that lobby."
replica rolexIn any case, the bulk of Brown & Crouppen's clients visit the firms' branch offices, not its downtown office, Brown said.
"They look like any other people going through any other building," Brown said.
The large law firms already in the building are a few of the "more elite" firms, making them odd neighbors for a firm that does a lot of yellow-page and late-night television advertising, said Dennis DeSantis, senior director at St. Louis brokerage Gateway Commercial. Gateway isn't involved in Brown & Crouppen's move.
Spokeswomen at Bryan Cave and Sonnenschein said the firms di
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