Northern Virginia law office moving to new tower

Published November 27, 2018 by Michael O'Connor

A transatlantic business law firm is moving one of its offices into a new tower in Tysons that is part of a forthcoming mixed-use development.

Womble Bond Dickinson has signed a 10-year lease for 24,239 square feet at a forthcoming office tower in Tysons called Boro Tower near the Greensboro Metro Station. Womble Bond Dickinson plans to move in 2019 to its new office, which will occupy the entire 15th floor of the 437,000-square-foot, 20-story building that is currently under construction.

Womble Bond Dickinson has more than 1,000 lawyers based out of 26 offices in the United States and the United Kingdom. The company is the product of a combination last year between the United Kingdom-based Bond Dickinson LLP and the United States-based Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice LLP. The law firm serves clients across different business sectors.

In addition to its Northern Virginia office, Womble Bond Dickinson has an office in Charlottesville with three attorneys.

Womble Bond Dickinson plans to move out of its current office in Tysons at 8065 Leesburg Pike that’s about 30,000 square feet and about a mile away from the Boro Tower site. About 40 of the company’s attorneys and staff will move into the new office.

Gary Nunes, the office managing partner for the Northern Virginia office, says the move came about in part because Boro Tower is near public transit and forthcoming retail options that will help attract talent to Womble Bond Dickinson and raise the company’s stature.

“We’re sort of seeing what Amazon is seeing,” Nunes says of the region’s newest corporate recruit.

Nunes says in an effort to make an efficient use of the space Womble Bond Dickinson will have uniform office sizes and a conference room on the same floor.

“There will be corner offices – they just won’t be the size they used to be,” Nunes says.

Boro Tower is now 68 percent preleased with the signing on of Womble Bond Dickinson and has about 135,000 square feet of office space available. The building is being co-developed by Bethesda, Md.-based The Meridian Group and New York-based Rockefeller Group. The tower is planned to be completed in early 2019.

The tower is part of a 15-acre development called The Boro that is being developed by The Meridian Group of Bethesda, Md. The Boro Tower has landed three other notable leases from the accounting firm KPMG, the law firm Hogan Lovells and media firm TEGNA.

In addition to the office space The Boro will have nearly 700 residential units and 260,000 square feet of retail. Plans call for a Whole Foods Market and a Kerasotes ShowPlace ICON Theatres location.

CBRE’s Rob Faktorow and Terry Reiley represented The Meridian Group and the Rockefeller Group for the Womble Bond Dickinson lease. The law firm was represented by Mike Shuler and Nate Krill at Avison Young.