The move is not a reduction in space, a spokeswoman for the company noted. She said the firm is leaving behind about 45,000 square feet of space in the Miami Valley Research Park for about 49,000 square feet of space in Miami Twp., in an office building at 3050 Newmark Drive.
One reason this is noteworthy is many employers have been reducing office space during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A spokeswoman for the firm could not immediately answer questions about why the firm is increasing space in the Dayton area, but she emphasized that the space in Kettering will not be retained.
A building permit application from WilmerHale shows the business seeks to renovate 50,000 square feet of office space in the Newmark building.
The address given in the Montgomery County permit is 3050 Newmark Drive, a building recently marketed on LoopNet as the “perfect regional headquarters office building, perfect for large call center operation.”
WilmerHale opened a business services center in the Miami Valley Research Park in 2012, at 3139 Research Blvd, and has operated there since, housing mostly administrative and management functions.
The Kettering office opened with some 187 workers working at an average salary of $49,000. The facility was to have a $9.1 million payroll on its opening.
The business is an international law firm with 1,000 lawyers working in 13 offices in the United States, Europe and Asia.
WilmerHale is the market name for Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, which was formed in 2004 with the merger of two law firms, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering of Washington, and Hale and Dorr of Boston. According to the American Lawyer magazine in 2010, a third of WilmerHale’s lawyers — 309 — were equity partners.
According to LoopNet, the building to be renovated offers nearly 48,900 square feet of space in an area where LexisNexis, Verso Paper, Huffy, Met Life and others also operate.
The permit application was dated Tuesday.
Mark Schwieterman, Kettering city manager, said the firm has communicated with the city for “quite some time.” The city offered the firm an incentives package to stay, but WilmerHale chose another path.
The firm’s payroll, as of May 2019, was about $17 million a year, Schwieterman said.
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