50 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan (Courtesy photo)

Chicago-founded Katten Muchin Rosenman has secured a new office lease for its New York office at 50 Rockefeller Center in advance of a 2022 move.

The new 125,000-square-foot office marks a small downsize from the firm's current location in Manhattan, just northeast of Rockefeller Center at 575 Madison Ave. The New York office is the firm's second largest by head count, with over 200 attorneys.

Chris DiAngelo, managing partner of Katten's New York office, said the decision to make the move was made both because of the opportunity to go into a building that provided some more amenities for employees while also making better use of space.

"We clearly were in the market for new space," he said. "There was nothing wrong with the old building, but parts of it seemed like they weren't designed for the modern office."

DiAngelo cited uneven office sizes at the old location, as well as a somewhat outdated layout.

Chris DiAngelo, New York managing partner with Katten Muchin Rosenman. (Courtesy photo)

"Office size is a currency in the legal community," he said lightly. "It caused some headaches trying to keep people happy."

He said the firm has roots in Midtown from the days before the 2002 merger with New York's Rosenman & Colin that created Katten in its current form. Uprooting that for a move west or downtown would have been a heavy lift for those who had designed their commute around getting to Midtown, he said.

DiAngelo said that the process of deciding on a new location was a cooperative one, and one the firm saw as an opportunity to allow for input from those it would effect.

"We did a bunch of focus groups and design committees," he said. "We tried to make it a high-inclusion process as this really affects people," he said.

The firm will occupy five of the 15 floors at 50 Rock. The building's largest tenant is Bank of America, which, according to The Real Deal, occupies about 320,000 of the available 515,000 square feet. It is unclear whether BofA will continue to occupy the same amount of space once Katten arrives in 2022.

DiAngelo said that although the location has been secured, the work is far from done when it comes to ironing out details that will be important to those that work there.

"We will need to figure out office plans, figure out food and catering and design," he said.

There will be more focus groups, he said, around those decisions as well.

"I really have no sense of design," DiAngelo quipped.

In its 2018 study on real estate in the legal industry, CBRE reported that Manhattan saw 2,231,061 square feet of law firm space transactions from Q3 2017 through Q2 2018. Of those, 95% were in Midtown.

That has changed more recently, though, as several firms, including Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Cooley, Milbank, and Boies Schiller Flexner have all either moved into or signed leases to move into the West Side's Hudson Yards complex or its periphery. Debevoise & Plimpton was said to be close to signing, but the firm did not confirm.

The moves west were partially fueled by landlords making concessions, such as months of free rent or cash to make improvements. Many of these were made in an effort to get firms to look at the Hudson Yards development, located between West 30th and West 43rd streets and 8th Avenue and the West Side Highway in Manhattan.

The development, the largest private real estate development in U.S. history, has been met with mixed reviews, with some calling it a revitalizing component to Manhattan's West Side and other decrying it as "America's largest gated community."

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