Newport Beach-based Olen Properties Corp. has made its largest local purchase in two years, snapping up a business park in Aliso Viejo.
The privately held real estate investor and developer recently completed the purchase of Pacific Park Business Center, a six-building complex on Argonaut that’s about half a mile north of the San Joaquin Hills (73) Toll Road.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The 99,700-square-foot property was listed for sale at about $20 million, or a little more than $200 per square foot.
It was an all-cash purchase, according to Igor Olenicoff, president of Olen and Orange County’s second-wealthiest resident, with a fortune estimated at $3.5 billion.
His company owns some 7.5 million square feet of office and industrial properties, much of them in OC, along with an apartment portfolio across the U.S. that tops 10,000 units.
An affiliate of Boston-based TA Associates Realty sold Pacific Park Business Center, which it had acquired in 2006 for an undisclosed price.
It’s the only property in Aliso Viejo that Olen owns, according to the company’s website.
“We are quite pleased with this acquisition,” Olenicoff said. The city’s office market “will continue to flourish with the growth of the area and no more vacant land for development.”
It’s the largest acquisition for Olen in Orange County since the summer of 2013, when it paid $73.5 million for Irvine Oaks, a 16-building complex in the Irvine Spectrum that runs about 322,000 square feet.
A majority of the Irvine Oaks complex is leased to online gaming company Blizzard Entertainment. Earlier this summer the company renewed its lease at Olen’s complex and the three-building office complex across the street—owned by Newport Beach-based developer Irvine Company—that serves as its headquarters.
The leases for both properties total about 435,000 square feet, and the recent renewals together represent the largest office lease reported in Orange County this year.
Tenants at Pacific Park Business Center run much smaller than their counterparts at Irvine Oaks, with most individual suites at the complex running only a few thousand square feet.
Notable tenants at the complex include Inceptus Medical LLC, a medical device incubator; Benefit Source Insurance, an independent healthcare insurance broker; and Maxim Marketing Corp., a snack food manufacturer.
The complex, which includes five single-story buildings and one with two floors, was 95% leased at the time of the sale, according to marketing materials from CBRE Group Inc., whose Darla Longo and Michael Kendell represented TA Associates in the sale.
Olen, prior to the Aliso Viejo purchase, had spent much of the past two years buying and developing out-of-state apartment properties, as well as lending money to other real estate owners for their own projects.
Active Aliso
The Olen purchase adds to a string of office sales in Aliso Viejo since May.
The largest deal over that period took place in late June when an affiliate of Invesco Advisers Inc., a Dallas-based institutional investor, paid a reported $108.1 million for 15 and 25 Enterprise, a pair of five-story offices at the Summit Office Campus in Aliso Viejo.
The two buildings, which total about 295,000 square feet, hold the local operations of homebuilder Lennar Corp. and other tenants.
Newport Beach-based Bixby Land Co. paid $11.6 million in May for a 53,000-square-foot building in the city’s Town Center Corporate Park. That building, which was 69% vacant at the time of sale, is being remodeled to emphasize creative-office uses.
Another building in Town Center Corporate Park, a 34,000-square-foot building at 26840 Aliso Viejo Parkway, sold this month to Kelemen Caamano Investments for $8 million.
The building was sold by networking gear maker QLogic Corp., which has its headquarters nearby.
Aliso Viejo’s office market runs a little more than 3 million square feet. Vacancy rates in the city stood at about 7% as of midyear, according to brokerage data.
The only new building going up in the city—a 205,000-square-foot office planned for the Summit Office Campus—is being built for Tustin-based medical device maker MicroVention Inc. for its new headquarters.
