Law firm relocation is the name of the game, and Venable is the latest to join in.
The 400-person DC office is heading to 600 Massachusetts Ave, where it'll be the anchor tenant. Just four blocks north and one east of the firm's current spot at 575 7th St, the new office will shrink in square footage (by about 40k, to 245k) but improve in flow and efficiency, and leave room for growth, says vice chair Brian Schwalb. The move should take place in the first quarter of 2017. (If you can't pack your boxes by then, you may have too much stuff.)
The new building will have a bocce ball court on the roof, an important factor for Venable. The firm's love for the game stems from its Terrell Place build-out in the early 2000s; it added a bocce court as a community space to bring people together. While all locations were on the table, Brian tells us, the search quickly came down to a relatively small subset on the East Side and Penn Quarter. The law firm was the first to commit to the Seventh Street corridor in '03 and is excited about staying in the neighborhood. On the site selection and build-out, Venable's working with Gould Property Company, Oxford Properties, Alliance Architecture, and Newmark Grubb Knight Frank.
