Adios 777

Paul and I moved our offices to 777 Brickell Avenue in 1996. We had begun our firm in what was then called International Place, but we always called it the CenTrust Building. It was iconic -- lit up in different colors each night, and with fixtures that were amazing -- courtesy of fraudster David Paul, who spared no stolen expense in building his edifice.

We were in a shared office space company called Quantum, and after being there for four months, we learned the company was bankrupt, and we had to leave. Paul convinced our roomie Mark to stay -- and so we squatted there, rent free, for 5 months.

My favorite memory from those waning months involved a case we had against a carnival. A roller coaster knocked over a young girl, shattering her leg. The company wanted to have a settlement conference, and the lawyer, an old timer called Miles, and his claim executive attended. They made a substantial offer.

After the offer, Miles said to us "Guys -- I know you're a brand new firm, and you really don't want to turn down this kind of money." Paul responded that we were exceptionally well funded, were doing what was best for the client, and had no worries about finances.

With that, a crew burst into the conference room, and said "We're here to repossess the rented plants," and started hauling them out. Miles looked at us sideways.  We explained that WE were moving, not broke, etc... We ended up settling for more money a few weeks later.

Anyway -- we then set about looking for new space, and thought we were going to move to the penthouse of the Museum Tower, then we got a call from our bankers at SunTrust. Would we move there?  At the time we did a LOT of business with them -- they held millions of our clients' dollars in protected, very profitable to the bank, accounts, and wanted us to be close. They offered us a very low priced lease, on the first floor, and we took it. We moved in in 1996.

It was perfect for us. We handled many memorable cases. We hosted many memorable social functions -- fundraisers for judges and other politicians, other parties.  We had many memorable laughs -- and some, to use the word of our late friend Alan, tensosity.

One year I forgot to send in a signed option letter, and the bank said we had to leave -- to move to the 4th floor. They paid for everything, and built out custom space for us up on the 4th floor. Our space was given to Trulucks, and great pub, which was a far better use of the space than our law firm.  This was 2008.

In 2011, Stuart came and took over our operations. He moved his staff and shared expenses with Mark, until, in a major douche move, Mark announced he was retiring and had made his final rent payment.

At that point, Joel took Mark's space, and since that time the operation has limped along. But then the building was sold to some Brazilian brothers, whom I call the Brazilian brothers, and SunTrust lost their sublease. With that, our sub, sublease ended, too, and Stuart and Joel had to renew with the Brazilians.

The days of the amazingly cheap rent were done. But, Stu and Joel liked the space, as did the several sub, sub, sub tenants, and it appeared that a renewal was happening for July. It was a big number -- close to $1M in rent over the coming 5 years. Joel demanded, at the very least, new paint and carpeting. The Brazilians said no -- they had already given the best deal, they said.

So Stu enlisted Vince to look around, and he found, on Craiglslist, an office condo for rent only 2 blocks away, for about half the cost. 

The movers are coming Saturday. D2 noted that this building has been my office since she was 4 -- the only building for her Dad she ever knew.

Paul came in and removed much of his personal stuff. I already had. I tossed out lots of old papers and records. I'm down to two bankers boxes, with our checkbooks and some case records. I will move these myself.

The office is due to be moved Saturday, so this is the final week in the building. I plan to, as Springsteen says, take a good look around.

Change is inevitable.

Adios, 777.