Benesch Friedlander law firm to occupy eight floors in Key Tower in downtown Cleveland

On Mar 3, 2022

CLEVELAND, Ohio — One of Cleveland’s largest law firms is leaving his home of nearly three decades and moving across Public Square to the Key Tower.

Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Arnonoff will move into the 164,000 square-foot space in the middle of next year, said Valerie Jerome, a spokeswoman for Key Tower owner The Millennia Cos.

The law firm is leaving a similarly sized space at 200 Public Square. Law firm Managing Partner Gregg Eisenberg said in an interview Thursday that the firm will occupy floors 42 to 49 of the 57-story tower, the tallest in the state of Ohio.

“For us, we wanted to stay in the city and be in the same home that we’ve been in for almost 85 years,” Eisenberg said of his law firm, which Crain’s Cleveland Business ranked as the third largest in Cleveland, behind Jones Day and BakerHostetler. The firm has been in its current home since 1994.

Eisenberg said that Millennia’s offer “was really perfect” and offers the firm space to grow.

The space will undergo substantial renovations to fit Benesch’s needs, Eisenberg said. A plan for the firm to move into the “NuCLEus” development that Stark Enterprises sought to build near the Gateway District sports complex fell through because the project was shelved.

Since the firm is moving from one downtown building to another, it does not mean more people will be downtown a given day. It does, however, show that a major employer has decided that the coronavirus pandemic and the effects it had on office life did not lead them to shrink its office footprint

Many in the real estate industry have feared that, as more companies see the benefits of having employees work remotely, that they would decide to downsize or forego their physical offices. While the amount of space leased in the city’s central business district has remained rather steady, those in the industry have said the real effects will be felt in the next few years, as more leases are set to expire.

But Eisenberg said the pandemic did change the way the law firm had its employees work. Before the omicron variant of the virus led to record high case numbers, the firm had employees working in the office two days a week and gave them flexibility to choose where to work for the other three.

That weekly schedule is back in effect, he said, and officials there will look at whether to change it near the end of the year.

He added, though, that “I do anticipate a model that’s based on flexibility. I don’t think that’s going to change.”

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