Western Digital Corp., the country’s largest maker of disk drives, is adding another large chunk of space to its new headquarters at the Park Place office campus in Irvine.
The company, which counts a market value of about $6.9 billion, recently inked a deal to add 104,000 square feet of space to its existing lease at Park Place, a sprawling, futuristic-looking low-rise office complex that’s owned by LBA Realty (see related story, above).
Terms of the latest lease weren’t disclosed.
The deal is believed to be the largest expansion of office space announced by an area business in nearly a year, rivaling a similar-sized expansion last year by Irvine-based online video game maker Blizzard Entertainment Inc.
The extra 104,000 square feet is roughly the same amount of space as four floors in a typical OC high-rise office building.
Western Digital now leases about 470,000 square feet of space at two of Park Place’s Atrium buildings, with leases at 3353 and 3355 Michelson Drive. The company now will occupy the bulk of both four-story buildings.
Other tenants at the Atrium buildings, which total 1.4 million square feet and were bought by LBA in 2009, include Balboa Insurance Group Inc., State Farm Insurance Co., Farmers New World Life Insurance Co., Prudential Financial Inc. unit Prudential Insurance, and the California Department of Transportation.
Western Digital moved its headquarters from Lake Forest to the office and retail campus just off the San Diego (I-405) Freeway last year.
That deal for 365,000 square feet was one of the larger relocations seen in OC of late.
The Park Place site houses Western Digital’s corporate functions, including its executive, legal, sales, marketing and operations teams.
It also includes space where drives and drive parts are tested, along with labs for product development.
• Headquarters: Irvine
• Business: disk drives
• Founded: 1970
• Ticker symbol: WDC (NYSE)
• Market value: $6.9 billion
• Notable: Leased additional 104,000 square feet at Park Place to go with 365,000-square-foot deal last year; consolidation of local operations ongoing, $4.3 billion acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Ltd. pending
Western Digital is believed to have about 1,600 workers in Irvine.
How much of the extra Park Place space is being used to handle growth for Western Digital isn’t clear.
While the bulk of its local employees are now in Park Place, parts of the relocation are still getting wrapped up, according to the company.
During the early stages of the move to Irvine, Western Digital had leased about 67,000 square feet in Lake Forest for engineering and administrative staff, as well as 34,000 square feet in Aliso Viejo for research and development, and sales staff.
Second Phase
The new lease is the second of a planned, two-phase move to Irvine, company officials said last week.
Along with the consolidation in Irvine, Western Digital’s operations are expected to expand following the closing of the acquisition of one of its competitors, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Ltd. of San Jose.
Western Digital said in March it planned to buy Hitachi GST, as it is known, in a $4.3 billion deal that’s set to close by year’s end.
The cash-and-stock deal is one of the biggest acquisitions in the history of Orange County’s tech sector.
Japanese parent Hitachi Ltd. is set to get a roughly 10% stake in Western Digital and two seats on the company’s board.
The deal will make Western Digital, which had about $2.4 billion in revenue last quarter, the undisputed leader in drives.
Western Digital shipped a record 53.8 million hard disk drives in the second quarter, up 6% from the first quarter, for a total market share of 32%, according to a report this month from El Segundo-based market tracker iSuppli Corp., a unit of Englewood, Colo.-based IHS Inc.
Hitachi GST was No. 3 in the industry last quarter, with 16% market share.
When the deal closes, Western Digital will have about 48% of the overall drive market, 50% of the laptop drive market and 52% for desktop PCs.
The No. 2 company in the industry, Scotts Valley-based rival Seagate Technologies LLC, counts a 31% overall market share.
Seagate is in a deal to buy Samsung Electronics Co.’s disk drive business, which counts about a 10% market share and is the industry’s fifth-largest disk maker. That deal would be worth about $1.4 billion.
