Law Firm McDermott Will & Schulte Negotiating 150K SF at BXP’s 343 Madison Avenue

The combined law firm of McDermott Will & Schulte is negotiating an approximately 150,000-square-foot deal at BXP’s upcoming 343 Madison Avenue, in a move that would absorb six of the tower’s 46 stories, Commercial Observer has learned.

BXP’s $2 billion, 930,000-square-foot Midtown tower kicked off construction to go vertical in July without an anchor tenant, presumably under the premise “If you build it, they will come.” And they did — with insurance and investment giant C.V. Starr, a division of Starr Companies, leasing roughly 275,000 square feet on the 16th through 27th floors in January.

The Kohn Pedersen Fox-designed office tower will top off at 844 feet and will open at the end of 2029 as an all-electric, net-zero building with column-free floors, plenty of amenities and direct entrances to Grand Central Terminal’s Madison Concourse.  

The new deal for McDermott Will & Schulte — which was renamed after a merger with McDermott Will & Emery and Schulte Roth & Zabel in August 2025 — comes after Owen Thomas, chairman and CEO of BXP, said during the real estate investment trust’s fourth-quarter earnings call in late January that BXP was in the midst of “negotiating a letter of intent for another 16 percent of the building, located just above Starr.”

The terms of the pending lease were unclear. Newmark is representing McDermott Will & Schulte in the deal, while one CBRE team is repping BXP and another CBRE team is repping SL Green. Spokespeople for the law firm and brokerages either declined to comment or did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Once the lease is officially signed, McDermott Will & Schulte is set to absorb around 150,000 square feet at 343 Madison Avenue, but it’s not enough space to house the combined firm’s formerly independent components, which both separately have long office leases at SL Green Realty-owned towers. 

The former Schulte Roth & Zabel is currently housed in 283,894 square feet at 919 Third Avenue, while the former McDermott Will & Emery recently ballooned to nearly 200,000 square feet at One Vanderbilt, including leasing the 48th floor in March in a 16-year deal.

As it happens with many law firm mergers, some specialty partners and their teams leave for competing firms, including 20 attorneys who fled to Dechert in January.

And as for backfilling any space that may be given up four or more years from now, many of the city’s top office towers have few floors available, with some tenants colliding over expansion options.

But BXP’s 343 Madison Avenue is well underway, with a focus on providing tenants with a vibe more like a luxury resort than a conventional office building.

“This is going to feel much more like a hotel, hospitality-infused vibe,” Rich Monopoli, senior vice president at BXP, told CO in January. “When you come into that revolving door at the entrance, the finishes, the tones, the lighting all the way up to the entrance and reception desks will have a combination of beautiful, warm stones, wood and plantings that just give it a really different tone.”