Exclusive: Startup FiscalNote More Than Doubles Space, Moves To 14th Street

FiscalNote, a tech startup fresh off a $10M funding round, is leasing 21k SF at the 229k SF One Thomas Circle, Bisnow has learned exclusively.

The company will move in at the end of this month, immediately replacing Clements Worldwide, which just announced it's moving from the building to One Franklin Square. FiscalNote had been in 8k SF of subleased space at 1155 F St NW. It launched in 2013, and it focuses on tracking, searching and analyzing legislative data.

JLL's Bobby Blair and Andy O'Brien repped FiscalNote, continuing their run of success in representing tech tenants ready to sign their own space. Why have they been so successful? Just look at FiscalNote's deal: it's ready-made space in an open floor plan and the lease is for just two years, with an option to expand into more space in the building.

"Telling our clients to do shorter-term deals is typically the opposite of what a real estate broker tells them," Bobby told Bisnow yesterday. "This company expects to keep growing 50% year-over-year for the next few years. We had to figure out how we do a deal that’s not going to encumber them with a long-term lease."

So landlord Polinger, Shannon & Luchs, with its broker, Transwestern's Joe Michel, agreed to the short-term lease, banking on its ability to retain FiscalNote as it continues on its meteoric growth path. Bobby says Polinger gets tech clients—it signed TrackMaven to a 22k SF full floor last summer in the same building. 

Bobby also says that while the live/work/play environments that Crystal City and NoMa are trying to promote to lure tech tenants work for some—we'll have more on that at next week's Creative Office event—it was more important for FiscalNote to be near big companies and government agencies in the CBD.

"It's hard to find creative space in the core market," Bobby says. The 20k SF-and-up tech tenants just don't have too many options downtown. "That's really a hole. But you’re seeing more owners pushing toward wanting to do things like that."