Oracle Corp. is getting a more prominent presence in Orange County after signing a lease for space at one of Irvine’s more recognizable office towers.
Redwood City-based Oracle plans to consolidate a handful of local offices at 17901 Von Karman Ave., best known as the former longtime home of Taco Bell Corp.
Oracle, a maker of business software, is getting its name atop the building, according to real estate sources familiar with the deal.
Until early this year, the glassed-walled tower al-ongside the San Diego (I-405) Freeway served as the headquarters of Taco Bell, a unit of Louisville, Ky.-based Yum Brands Inc. that recently moved to the Ir-vine Spectrum.
Oracle’s leasing about two floors—roughly 47,000 square feet of space—at the tower, which is owned by Irvine-based LBA Realty. The lease is for 10 years, according to sources.
The company is combining two locations in Costa Mesa and one in the Irvine Spectrum at the new space.
The Irvine lease isn’t a major deal by Oracle’s standards. The company owns or leases nearly 18 million square feet of space across the U.S. and abroad, including about 2.1 million square feet in Redwood City alone, according to its most recent annual report.
About 4 million of the company’s space was being marketed for sale or sublease as of last year.
Oracle has been consolidating some office space in the past year after its $7 billion buy of Santa Clara’s Sun Microsystems Inc., a deal that closed early this year. Sun has office space in Irvine with a lease through early 2011.
The Irvine lease is one of the larger relocations of a big-name tenant the area’s seen this year, rivaling a 67,000-square-foot Irvine lease signed in February by JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Matthew Miller, president of the Los Angeles office of brokerage Cresa Partners LLC, represented Oracle in the deal. CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. Senior Vice President John Weiner represented LBA Realty. Officials directly involved in the lease declined to comment on the transaction.
In OC, Oracle has about 320 employees. The company ranked No. 11 among local software companies in terms of revenue generated by their local operations, according to last year’s Business Journal list.
This year’s Business Journal ranking of software companies will be published next week.
The bulk of Oracle’s local operations had been at Costa Mesa’s Pacific Arts Plaza, at 611 Anton Blvd.
That building, which counts the headquarters of law firm Rutan & Tucker LLP, is in receivership after Los Angeles-based landlord Maguire Properties Inc.—now known as MPG Office Trust Inc.—defaulted on the property’s loans last year.
The Anton Boulevard office campus now is being overseen by brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.
Oracle also had a smaller office in the Irvine Spectrum that was home to Relsys, a healthcare analytics company Oracle acquired last year.
Oracle’s space in Costa Mesa and the Spectrum are listed as being available as of July, according to CoStar Group Inc. data.
The lease fills a big hole at LBA Realty’s 273,000-square-foot Von Karman tower, which had been gutted following the departure of Taco Bell earlier this year.
In late 2008, Taco Bell, the largest restaurant chain operator based in Orange County, announced a deal to move its headquarters to the Irvine Spectrum. It signed an 181,000-square-foot lease at One Premier Place, a two-building center just off the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway that served as the West Coast headquarters for Ford Motor Co.
LBA Realty had been marketing space for about eight full floors of space at the tower, with monthly asking rents listed at $2.65 and $2.75 per square foot.
