PALM BEACH, FL-LexisNexis has signed a 10-year, $13 million lease renewal at the Meridian Commercial office complex at the Arvida Park of Commerce, a business park in Boca Raton near I-95 and Yamato Road. The company is the sole occupant of its 61,524-square foot building.

The rental rate for the space is in line with other rates in the North Boca Raton/Arvida Park of Commerce corridor, which run from about $14 to $16 per square foot triple net, says Gordon Messinger, a senior commercial associate with the Terranova Corp. who represented the landlord, a pension fund advisor based in New York known as Granite Meridian, LLC. The office vacancy rate in Boca Raton is about 30%.

LexisNexis is a global provider of information designed for professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting, and academic markets. A part of Reed Elsevier, LexisNexis serves customers in more than 100 countries with 15,000 employees worldwide. The space the company occupies at the Meridian Commercial office complex is home to its risk solutions division.

Lexis Nexis was one of the original tenants in the Meridian Commercial office complex, beginning in 1998, says Messinger. “With the lease coming up in 2011, the company looked at alternatives in the Boca Raton area, but decided to stay because it had invested a lot of money into the building,” he says. Among those  investments was a generator, expansion of the company’s data center and changes to the interior of the building, says Messinger.

It became hard to pick up and move, once the company made all that investment, says Messinger. Plus, the landlord will be putting a new roof on the building next year, he adds.

“LexisNexis is a strong, credit tenant, one of the best you will find,” says Messinger. ” Everyone wants this type of tenant,” he says.

“We had been working with LexisNexis for over a year,” says Messinger. Lots of landlords were trying to get the company to relocate, but the cost would have been very high, even with incentives offered by other landlords, he says.