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Clean Energy Bound for Newport Beach

Seal Beach-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp., the largest builder and operator of natural-gas stations in the U.S., is moving its headquarters to Newport Beach this summer.

The company, which counts a market value of about $1.16 billion, recently signed a lease for space at Irvine Company’s MacArthur Court, a five-building office complex next to John Wayne Airport.

Clean Energy will lease about 70,000 square feet at the office campus and have its headquarters at 4675 MacArthur Court, one of two 15-story towers at the 690,000-square-foot complex.

Approximately 225 people will make the move from Seal Beach, according to Clean Energy officials.

The new deal—one of the larger office leases seen in Orange County so far this year—represents a step up in space for Clean Energy.

Regulatory filings show the company currently leasing about 43,000 square feet of space at Bixby Office Park in Seal Beach, a three-building complex just off the San Diego (405) Freeway.

“We have grown rapidly, and the new property in Newport Beach will allow for our future growth,” Gary Foster, senior vice president of Communications of Clean Energy, said in a statement.

Clean Energy currently is the largest publicly traded company based in Seal Beach, and it is OC’s 14th-largest public company by market value. It serves customers that operate commercial fleets that combine for more than 30,000 natural-gas-powered vehicles, and it owns and operates nearly 350 fueling stations in the U.S., Canada and Peru.

The company, which was co-founded by legendary oilman and corporate raider T. Boone Pickens, had $334 million in revenue last year, up 14% from a year earlier.

• Headquarters: Seal Beach

• Business: Builds, operates natural-gas stations

• Founded: 2001

• Ticker symbol: CLNE (Nasdaq)

• 2012 revenue: $334 million

• Recent earnings: ($41.7 million) for Q4

• Market value: About $1.16 billion

• Notable: Signed lease for headquarters in Newport Beach, plans move later this year

It still faces hurdles on profits and lost about $101.3 million last year as it continued to invest in building its networks of natural-gas stations.

The recent boom in supplies of natural gas appear to bode well for Clean Energy’s strategy, bringing lower prices that provide incentives for converting vehicles to run on the fuel.

The “next big sector to begin to switch to natural gas is the long-haul trucking industry,” Foster said.

Much of the planning and oversight for the company’s infrastructure push is done out of Clean Energy’s headquarters, he said.

Terms of the company’s new lease with Irvine Co. were not disclosed. Other space at MacArthur Court counts monthly rents running from $1.90 to $2.70 per square foot, according to the Newport Beach-based landlord’s website.

News of Clean Energy’s upcoming relocation comes a little more than a month after its current offices in Seal Beach were sold to San Diego-based Parallel Capital Partners Inc. in an $85 million deal. It is the largest office sale seen in OC so far this year.

Reinvestment, Redesigns

Clean Energy stands to become the largest tenant at MacArthur Court, which has seen some notable additions and expansions in the past few months, following what officials at Irvine Co. called a “significant reinvestment” in the property last year.

Other companies moving to the complex include Santa Ana-based MSC Software Corp., which also will relocate its headquarters to 4675 MacArthur later this year after inking a nearly 36,000-square-foot lease.

William Lyon Homes, which last week filed paperwork for a $200 million initial public offering, moved its headquarters to MacArthur Court earlier this year.

“After a significant reinvestment in 2012, MacArthur Court is seeing strong interest from a broad spectrum of customers,” Steve Case, executive vice president of Irvine Co.’s office division, said in a statement.

Improvements to the property include a new on-site gym, remodeled conference centers and an open-air plaza, according to Case.

Some of the more notable upgrades to the property of late are tenant-driven.

The Newport Beach office of San Francisco-based architecture firm Gensler, which already had its local office 4675 MacArthur, is expanding into about 23,000 square feet of space on the first two floors of the building.

Gensler is now putting the finishing touches on a redesigned ground floor at the office, which the firm describes as having elements of a “modern beach house” along with a number of environmentally friendly features.

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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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