Irvine Co. has offloaded two older properties, an apartment complex in Huntington Beach and a business park close to John Wayne Airport, in separate deals.
The Newport Beach-based investor, a rare seller of buildings, likely generated $60 million or more for the Sendero Huntington Beach rental complex and SkyPark Business Center in Irvine.
Irvine-based Koll Co., which owns other nearby business parks, bought SkyPark, a three-building office campus totaling 81,551 square feet, according to real estate sources.
Property records show San Francisco-based apartment investor Sack Properties bought Sendero, a 152-unit rental complex that was Irvine Co.’s only apartment property in Surf City.
Terms of the deals weren’t immediately disclosed.
The Business Journal reported this summer that SkyPark was listed for sale with the local capital markets team of Newmark Knight Frank.
The complex, about a mile north of the airport near the intersection of Main Street and MacArthur Boulevard, was expected to bring nearly $25 million. It was one of Irvine Co.’s older office holdings. The company’s web page for the property noted this summer that it “provides an economical alternative for businesses within the sought-after airport area.”
An Irvine Co. spokesperson told the Business Journal this month that, “Long-term ownership remains one of our guiding principles; however, we have, for strategic reasons, decided to sell SkyPark Business Center, which represents a very small part of our portfolio of more than 500 office buildings.”
The late Don Koll, founder of Koll Co., developed a large part of the low-rise business park space in the vicinity of SkyPark during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The privately held company still has significant holdings in the immediate area, which it calls Airport Business Center.
The company’s day-to-operations are now run by Managing Principal Jerry Yahr, Don Koll’s son-in-law.
Long-term Koll Co. strategy has been overseen in recent years by Chief Executive Ray Wirta, who also serves as president of the investment properties group at Irvine Co.
Apartments
Sack Properties was also the beneficiary of a rare Irvine Co. sale, recently completing the buy of the roughly 117,000-square-foot Sendero just south of the San Diego (405) Freeway near the intersection of Warner Avenue and Magnolia Street.
It’s Sack’s third reported transaction in Orange County since last year. About a year ago, it was part of an investment group that sold the 165-unit Vio Apartments complex in Tustin for a reported $41.2 million; they acquired the property in early 2015 for about $33 million.
Also last year, Sack paid about $21.7 million for the 84-unit Vio Costa Mesa, which along with the recently bought Huntington Beach complex, is the only OC apartment complex it currently owns, according to its website.
The company’s long been an apartment investor in the Bay Area; about five years ago it set up a commingled fund to focus on Southern California deals.
Monthly Sendero rents start at $1,745 for one-bedroom apartments, and $2,270 for two-bedroom units, according to the property’s website.
4th in OC
The Sendero deal is the latest in a string of dispositions for the apartment division of Irvine Co., OC’s largest owner of rental properties, with a local portfolio brokerage data show tops 41,000.
The company has been offloading a number of older noncore complexes it acquired in 2013 as part of a portfolio deal of apartment properties formerly owned by Archstone Co. in OC and San Diego. The deal, which came on undisclosed terms and totaled about 5,000 apartments, included rental properties in a number of local cities where Irvine Co. previously had no presence, including Aliso Viejo, Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach, Mission Viejo, Placentia and Rancho Santa Margarita.
Complexes acquired in the deal that were in Fountain Valley, Placentia, Santa Ana and Tustin, where Irvine Co. has a large presence, all sold in the past year.
The deals generated nearly $200 million, property records show.
A per-unit price similar to other Irvine Co. dispositions of rental properties over the past year would translate to $40 million on Sendero.
Following the past year’s sales, Irvine Co.’s lone OC rental properties west of the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway are its Gateway Apartment Homes in the Platinum Triangle and Costa Mesa’s Enclave at South Coast, according to the company’s website. It built the high-end complexes in the past decade.
