Baker Tilly Virchow Krause LLP announced this week that it will move its Milwaukee office from the Honey Creek Corporate Center on the city’s west side to the U.S. Bank Center in downtown Milwaukee.
Baker Tilly said it has signed a lease to occupy 68,000 square feet of office space in the 42-story U.S. Bank Center, which is the tallest building in the state. The company will make the move to downtown in December. Baker Tilly was represented in the transaction by Steve Palec of Cresa.
“We anticipate continued growth in virtually all industry and service areas of our firm in Milwaukee, and are very excited to move to the heart of downtown,” said Bill Wertz, partner and market leader of Baker Tilly’s Milwaukee office. “This new location offers many conveniences and amenities to both our employees and clients. It also places us closer to valued business colleagues and referral sources.”
Baker Tilly’s offices will be located on the 32nd, 33rd and 34th floors of the U.S. Bank Center, Palec said. The firm has about 225 full-time employees in its Milwaukee office.
For almost two years, Baker Tilly executives have indicated that they planned to move the firm’s Milwaukee office to downtown Milwaukee. Last year, the firm signed a letter of intent to lease space in Washington Square, a proposed office building that was under development by Wauwatosa-based Irgens Development Partners LLC and developer Joel Lee, owner of Van Buren Management Inc. However, that project has not moved forward, and Baker Tilly shifted its focus to existing downtown office buildings.
“We pinned a lot of hopes on Washington Square, but when that project stalled we started looking at other options downtown,” Wertz said. “We simply had to move on.”
The 1.1 million-square-foot U.S. Bank Center, located at 777 E. Wisconsin Ave., was built in 1971 and is owned by U.S. Bank. The building has very little vacant space, but law firm Foley & Lardner LLP reconfigured some of its space to free up space for Baker Tilly, Palec said.
“Along with other major tenants of the building, we are helping accommodate Baker Tilly’s real estate needs and using this opportunity to reconfigure some of our space,” said Linda Benfield, office managing partner of Foley & Lardner. “We have found that our increased emphasis on efficiency for clients has reduced our requirements for physical space and related support staff. Our investments in technology, including digital libraries and electronic filing systems, have allowed us to streamline our operations, reducing space needs and ensuring that we can provide our services at competitive rates, particularly at a time when companies are still recovering from the global economic slowdown.”
Baker Tilly’s Milwaukee office is currently located at 115 S. 84th St., Milwaukee, in the Honey Creek Corporate Center, which is owned by Madison-based Greywolf Partners Inc.
