Bella Terra Towers, one of Huntington Beach’s largest office complexes, has sold for about $76 million.
The property, located alongside the San Diego (405) Freeway near Beach Boulevard, was bought by a partnership of Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. and GEM Realty Capital Inc., a real-estate investor based in Chicago.
The deal is the most expensive office-campus sale in Orange County this year.
The sale works out to a price of about $177 per square foot for the 9-acre complex, which totals approximately 383,000 square feet of office space.
It also includes close to 46,000 square feet of restaurant and other retail space, as well as a 24 Hour Fitness gym.
Offices
The office portion of the complex consists of a 12-story tower and two six-story buildings.
The offices hold the headquarters of restaurant chain BJ’s Restaurants Inc. and local offices for Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc., among other tenants.
The office portion of Bella Terra Towers is about 60% leased.
One of the six-story buildings is nearly empty, according to market tracker CoStar Group Inc.
The campus is next to the Shops at Bella Terra mall, and is part of the larger 70-acre Bella Terra mixed-use area, where ongoing development includes new apartment construction.
The eight-story Hotel Huntington Beach and a two-story medical property next to the office complex were not part of the sale.
The property operated out of receivership for more than a year after the prior owners fell behind on a $105 million loan taken out around the time of the complex’s previous sale in 2007.
The property was owned by Bella Terra Office JV LLC, an entity led by Horsham, Pa.-based Capmark Financial Group Inc. and other investors, including San Jose-based DJM Capital Partners Inc.
DJM Capital also owns and runs the Shops at Bella Terra.
It paid a reported $228 million for the nearly 780,000-square-foot mall in 2005.
Capmark, once one of the largest commercial real estate finance companies in the country, filed for bankruptcy in 2009.
San Diego-based Triglid had been acting as receiver for the property since mid-2010.
The company worked with brokerage Eastdill Secured to sell Bella Terra Towers.
The deal is the second large office buy for Lincoln Property in OC since 2010.
Last year, the company partnered with New York-based private equity firm Angelo Gordon & Co. to buy the two-building Griffin Towers office complex in Santa Ana, which holds the headquarters of Corinthian Colleges Inc.
Griffin Towers, located in the South Coast Metro submarket, sold for about $90 million, or about $164 per square foot.
Angelo Gordon initiated another Santa Ana deal this October, announcing plans to buy the headquarters of Powerwave Technologies Inc. in a nearly $50 million transaction.
Lincoln Property wasn’t part of the Powerwave office sale.
Rebranding
The new owners are rebranding the Bella Terra Towers as One Pacific Plaza, the site’s name before its sale in 2007.
Brokers with the Irvine office of Cushman & Wakefield Inc. were recently hired to lease vacant space.
Monthly rents at the buildings average $2.35 per square foot, according to brokerage data. Available offices range in size from about 1,100 square feet to 36,000 square feet.
