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Real Estate Boutique: Shift From Workouts to Buyouts

Principals with Tustin-based Bridgeport Investments are expecting a busy rest of the year in commercial real estate deals.

“I think we’re going to see that the number of transactions is going to be noticeably greater” than what’s been seen in the past year or so, said Randy Bramel, founder of Bridgeport, a boutique real estate investment banking and advisory company that started in 1990. “I’m optimistic.”

The company’s helped finance real estate deals worth about $1.5 billion since 2003. It has spent a good part of the past few years helping its clients rework loans made prior to the recession.

Since last summer, the company’s clients have turned to buying, according to Bramel.

That’s due to an improving economy, as well as better financing for real estate investors, he said.

“Equity capital is fully back, and a lot more debt is available now than it was eight or nine months ago,” said Bramel, who is one of three Bridgeport principals.

The others are Chris Bramel, his son, and Paul Conzelman.

The company counts a core of about 20 or so clients, a combination of commercial, residential and land developers and investors, according to Bramel.

They’re “all entrepreneurial” and are raising money while looking for deals to take on, he said.

Companies Bridgeport works with include Irvine’s Steadfast Cos., a real estate investor that last year started a nontraded real estate investment trust.

Bridgeport recently helped arrange $10.5 million in debt for Steadfast to buy a discounted loan tied to a 85,000-square-foot office project in Simi Valley.

It also works with Irvine’s CapRock Partners LLC, an industrial investor that makes deals of $3 million to $15 million.

Bridgeport recently arranged a $12.5 million investment that helped CapRock buy a portfolio of distressed local industrial buildings in Southern California.

It’s also in the process of putting together its first construction loan since 2008, to help a developer finance a self-storage project, according to Bramel.

“We’re definitely in an upward trend,” in terms of deals, Bramel said.

Rodeo Restaurant

Bull riding is coming to Costa Mesa’s Triangle Square mall.

The shopping center recently signed Saddle Ranch Chop House as its latest restaurant.

In addition to steaks, Saddle Ranch bills itself as providing a “high energy, rock-western experience,” including a mechanical bull.

Saddle Ranch has two other locations in California. Its flagship restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles serves as the basis of a reality TV show on VH1.

The Triangle Square restaurant is set to be a little less than 8,000 square feet, according to filings with the city of Costa Mesa.

Saddle Ranch joins a 5,660-square-foot El Corazon restaurant and a 24 Hour Fitness gym among new tenants signed to the mall, which is owned by a venture including Richard Kelly Holdings LLC of Costa Mesa and Newport Beach’s Greenlaw Partners.

Hotel Sale

A Cypress hotel was among three Woodfin Suites in California that changed hands in a $76.5 million acquisition earlier this month.

Chicago’s Hyatt Hotels Corp. bought the three hotels, which count a combined 570 rooms, from a venture managed by New York-based Three Wall Capital LLC.

The sale works out to a price of about $134,000 per room.

The local hotel changing hands was the Woodfin Suite Hotel Cypress, a 142-suite hotel for business travellers and tourists.

It’s being renamed Hyatt Summerfield Suites Cypress/Anaheim.

The other two hotels changing hands are in the Bay Area and San Diego. Hyatt said it’s planning $15 million of renovations to the three hotels.

Brokerage Hires

The Orange County office of Jones Lang LaSalle added a pair of managing directors to help bolster the brokerage’s sales of apartments and shopping centers.

The company said this month it hired Michelle Schierberl for its capital markets practice for the Americas. She joins as a managing director and will focus on the retail investment sales sector on the West Coast.

Schierberl has brokered more than $1.5 billion in sales in her career and had been with the Newport Beach office of Grubb & Ellis Co. since 1994.

Jones Lang LaSalle also hired Joe Leon as a managing director for its apartment division.

Leon counts more than 20 years of experience in apartments, including a long stint at Hendricks & Partners. He has worked on $3 billion of deals in that time.

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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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