Fort Lauderdale Civil Trial Firm Leases at Downtown's New 550 Building
The firm took out a 10-year lease.
A boutique civil litigation firm in Fort Lauderdale is moving to newly built 550 Building in downtown.
Gutterman Trial Group, which lists nine attorneys on its website, leased a 7,973-square-foot office on the fourth floor at the tower for 10 years. The lease value wasn’t provided.
The practice represents insurance carriers and their policyholders in claims that include property, casualty, coverage, extra-contractual, subrogation, reinsurance, construction, marine and yacht, transportation and cargo.
Gutterman Trial is moving from its space at 200 E. Broward Blvd.
550 Building developer Blackhawk Properties & Investments LLC completed the seven-story, building early last year. It has 86,000 square feet of office space. An eight-story, 634-space garage is attached.
The property at 550 S. Andrews Ave. likely is the first office product in downtown South of Las Olas since 1989.
Collins Capital Partners’ Kate Murphy and Douglas Management’s William Murphy lead Blackhawk Properties.
The office building has 12,500 square feet of retail space. Of that, 7,500 square feet is ground-floor restaurant space with roughly 4,400 square feet of available for lease.
The garage also includes retail, as this is where The SOLO Shoppes takes up 13,000 square feet. Fitness company Legacy Fit and Bank of OZK, previously known as Bank of the Ozarks, will be SOLO Shoppes tenants.
Gutterman Trial is joining Berger Commercial Realty real estate firm in the office tower.
Berger Commercial Realty/Corfac International senior sales associate Jonathan Thiel, sales associate John Forman and senior vice president Joseph Byrnes represented landlord Blackhawk Properties in lease negotiations with Gutterman.
Cushman & Wakefield’s A.J. Belt and Jeff Holding represented Gutterman Trial in the transaction.
The law firm was attracted to the 550 Buildings’s modern design, flexible floor plans and central location, according to Berger Commercial. The building is across Southeast First Avenue from the Broward County Judicial Complex.
Blackhawk bought the 32,500-square-foot Justice Building that was on the site in 2013.
Firm founder and managing partner Marc Gutterman didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
In recent years, South Florida law firms have seized the opportunity of ending leases to re-design their spaces. The most notable trend is same-sized office for all attorneys regardless of seniority, creating a more egalitarian workplace culture.
In recent moves, Carlton Fields and Hunton Andrews Kurth embraced this approach in their new Miami offices.
Carlton Fields moved into a 50,000-square-foot space at 2 MiamiCentral at the Brightline passenger train in station and Hunton Andrews into an office on the 24th-floor office at Wells Fargo Center in downtown.