Real Estate: Carmel Valley Becomes
Enticing for Attorneys
When Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP announced the opening of a Del Mar Heights office this month, they became the latest law firm to chew up space in the area.
Lawyers are gravitating to the technology-heavy area from UTC to Carlsbad, as law firms are opening new offices and expanding existing spaces to accommodate the business law and intellectual property needs of nearby tech and biotech companies.
“The litigators want to be Downtown,” said Bill Cavanagh, a commercial real estate broker for Business Real Estate Brokerage Co. “But the business firms want to be close to the tech-oriented companies.”
The swath between UTC and Carlsbad boasts hordes of established tech companies, as well as up-and-coming businesses the law firms find attractive. These high-tech companies mean big business for law firms, many of which are expanding rapidly.
“Most of the clients of Sheppard and Mullin live up in North County and certainly the emerging growth companies are located in North County,” said partner Dick Kintz. “I think if we continue to only have an office Downtown we will be at a disadvantage in serving our existing clients and also in competing to secure the client in the first place.”
Sheppard and Mullin, which expects to move into its 14,000-square-foot space in late July or early August to complement its Downtown offices, will find a host of other firms as their neighbors in the region.
On Sept. 1, Cooley Godward LLP will more than double its current office space, moving across the street in the UTC area to 135,000 square feet of office space. They opened the current office in 1992 with five lawyers and expect to have 95 attorneys by the fall.
The firm’s client list includes Qualcomm Inc., Cymer Inc., Titan Corp. and MP3.com.
Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe LLP will complete a similar expansion in UTC in late fall, when it finishes moving into its new offices on La Jolla Village Drive. The firm is splitting operations between its old and new offices. The move will create 50 percent more office space for Heller Ehrman.
Firms such as Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP, are expanding so quickly they can’t stay in the same office space for long.
The firm moved its San Diego headquarters in March 2000 from Downtown to 73,000 square feet in Del Mar.
“Within a month, we’d outgrown it,” said partner Rick Parker, sitting in a temporary office a half-mile north of the firm’s main office on El Camino Real. In addition to the 73,000 square feet Brobeck occupies on El Camino Real, it has added 28,000 square feet on High Bluff Road. Construction is under way on a 90,000-square-foot building next to Brobeck’s existing building on El Camino Real. Parker said the firm expects to fill 40 to 50 percent of that building when it opens in the middle of next year.
Morrison & Foerster LLP started its first San Diego office in October 1999 with three lawyers in Del Mar Heights. In less than a year, the firm had 29 lawyers spread between three Del Mar Heights offices totaling 12,000 square feet of space.
By October 2000, the firm had moved 37 lawyers and nearly 100 employees into 46,000 square feet of space in Carmel Valley. Some of the firm’s major clients include Ericsson Wireless Communications, Gen-Probe and Idec Pharmaceuticals.
Marketing manager Rajka Hayden said the firm is still in “expansion mode.”
“We think we’re OK for the next six months, but after that we have to seriously consider where we are going to go from there,” she said
