Williams Mullen law firm moving to downtown Raleigh

RALEIGH -- Law firm Williams Mullen agreed to a deal that will move its North Raleigh offices -- and about 110 employees -- back downtown late next year.

The firm, which last month said it wanted to return to downtown, announced today it will lease 75,000 square feet from Highwoods Properties in the 33-story RBC Plaza. The building is to be complete this year at Martin and Fayetteville Streets.

"We are excited to be moving to RBC Plaza and the heart of downtown Raleigh," Keith Kapp, a Williams Mullen vice president, said in a statement. "This is a great opportunity for us to be in a central location."

It's an aboutface of sorts for the successor to 138-year-old Maupin Taylor, one of the state's oldest firms.

Maupin Taylor led a suburban exodus of lawyers from downtown Raleigh in the 1984, setting up on Glenwood Avenue before moving to Highwoods Tower I in northwest Raleigh, where it has remained since the early 1990s.

Williams Mullen, which bought Maupin Taylor last year, assumed Maupin's 51,000-square-foot lease, which is to expire in late 2009.

Its decision to move was "another endorsement ... of the vitality and future growth of Raleigh's downtown," Highwoods CEO Ed Fritsch said.

As companies have flowed to downtown, the center city's office vacancy rate has dipped to a decade-low 5.2 percent, according to a June 30 market survey conducted by Highwoods.

RBC Plaza's 275,000 square feet of offices are 95 percent pre-leased. Williams Mullen joins RBC Bank and Poyner & Spruill, another law firm that left downtown for Glenwood Avenue offices in the 1980s.

Poyner & Spruill last year agreed to lease 60,000 square feet in the RBC tower. RBC has a long-term lease for 130,000 square feet -- girth that helped get its name on the building.