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QLogic May Be Eyeing Aliso Viejo Expansion

Aliso Viejo-based storage network gear maker QLogic Corp. may be readying for a big local expansion.

The company reportedly has designs to build a 100,000-square-foot building at the Summit Office Campus in Aliso Viejo.

Also on tap are plans for a 400-space parking garage at the 12-acre site, according to real estate sources. The construction for both projects could be completed in the next two years.

The additions could represent an increase of nearly 50% in office size for the company, which counts about 535 Orange County workers.

QLogic owns three buildings totaling 165,000 square feet at the Summit. It leases an additional 37,000 square feet of space at the campus. The lease ends in 2009.

QLogic’s primary product development, operations, sales and corporate offices are housed at the Aliso Viejo campus.

The company is talking with city officials to get approval on the expansion, according to sources. Current plans at the site allow for another two-story, 46,000-square-foot office building to be built.


Bidding

QLogic has been soliciting bids from construction companies on the office building and the garage, according to sources.

QLogic officials wouldn’t confirm the project’s details.

“We don’t have any specific plans,” said Rick Franz, vice president of technology and planning for QLogic. “Our long-term, general plans are to expand in Orange County.”

Franz declined to comment further, except to say “everything is predicated on how well business goes,at this point everything is positive for QLogic.”

The four-story building expansion would be the company’s biggest property in Aliso Viejo. Its other space is in two-story buildings, which top out at about 60,000 square feet.

The existing buildings were built by Aliso Viejo-based Parker Properties LLC, which has been developing the Summit since 1997.

Roughly 1 million square feet at the Summit has been built. The campus is on Aliso Viejo Parkway just off the San Joaquin Hills (73) Toll Road.

It is set to eventually total about 1.8 million square feet.

The campus includes the local headquarters for Miami-based homebuilder Lennar Corp., as well as the headquarters for Safeguard Health Enterprises Inc. and TechSpace Inc.


QLogic’s Move

In 1999, Parker Properties agreed to work with QLogic, building a campus for the company. QLogic moved its headquarters to Aliso Viejo from Costa Mesa, where it had taken about 83,000 square feet of space.

Officials with Parker Properties describe the QLogic setup as “a campus within a campus.”

The initial 10-year lease deal for the site came with the option for QLogic to buy three properties. It exercised that right in 2000, paying about $32 million, or roughly $200 per square foot.

QLogic also leases space for design centers in Roseville, Eden Prairie, Minn., and Austin, Texas. Those operations together total about 85,000 square feet of leased space.

A year ago, QLogic signed a 42-month lease for 20,000 square feet of space near Dublin, Ireland. QLogic has sales and other operations at the site.

An expansion in Aliso Viejo could minimize concerns about QLogic moving jobs elsewhere.

The company has about 850 workers. QLogic recently said it had outsourced more than a hundred jobs to India in the past 18 months.


Local Growth

QLogic Chief Executive H.K. Desai has said he expects to increase its employee count as well as the number of jobs it moves offshore.

Desai declined to give specifics.

He said jobs going to India are for “non-core” engineering work, including basic testing of products.

QLogic makes host bus adapters and other gear for linking computers on data storage networks.

Staff reporter Brian Womack contributed to this report.

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Mark Mueller
Mark Mueller
Mark is the Editor-in-Chief of the Orange County Business Journal, one of the premier regional business newspapers in the country. He’s the fifth person to hold the editor’s position in the paper’s long history. He oversees a staff of about 15 people. The OCBJ is considered a must-read for area business executives. The print edition of the paper is the primary source of local news for most of the Business Journal’s subscribers, which includes most of OC’s major corporate and community players. Mark’s been with the paper since 2005, and long served as the real estate reporter for the paper, breaking hundreds of commercial and residential real estate stories. He took on the editor’s position in 2018.
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