ST. LOUIS-Ralcorp has signed a new lease at Bank of America Plaza to expand its office headquarters to 175,000 square feet. The food manufacturer had been sub-leasing its space, and now signed directly with owner Positive Investments, and will add three floors of about 57,000 square feet.

Ralcorp first subleased its space from IBM about 10 years ago, David Steinbach with Jones Lang LaSalle tells GlobeSt.com. Steinbach and David Biales represented Positive. “That lease was rolling this year,” he says. “Now it’s a direct deal.”

Positive bought the 750,000-square-foot building at 800 Market St. from Gramercy Capital Corp. for about $48 million in December 2009. The 30-story tower was then about 90% leased. Steinbach wouldn’t provide a current occupancy figure, and would only say that the property “is doing better than the local office market.” Bank of America itself pulled out of the building in the second quarter of 2011, leaving a 140,000-square-foot hole in the building.

Rick Messey with Cassidy Turley represented Ralcorp in the lease. According to his company’s Q4 St. Louis office report, the downtown office market is about 20.7% vacant. The report said that job loss has hurt the St. Louis area, with Smurfit Stone, Verizon, Sara Lee, Monsanto and Wells Fargo all also reducing space in the area during 2011.

However, the Bank of America building recently had more good news, as Brown & James PC announced in February that it would move into about 54,000 square feet on three floors for 11 years. The law firm is moving its headquarters from about 50,000 square feet nearby at 1010 Market St.