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Aleks Corp., a Tustin-based educational software company formed at the University of California, Irvine, looks to be planning for growth after signing a lease in Irvine.
The company recently signed a 54,000-square-foot lease at the Discovery Business Center in the Irvine Spectrum.
It’s a nearly doubling in size for Aleks, which has been based at a Red Hill Avenue office in Tustin for the past few years.
The company will be moving to 15460 Laguna Canyon Road in April, according to Randall Parker, president of Travers Realty Corp., who represented Aleks in the eight-year lease.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Other buildings in the Discovery Business Center—just off Sand Canyon Avenue—list monthly rents of $1.45 per square foot, according to landlord Irvine Company’s website.
Aleks has been adding employees recently. Two years ago, the company employed about 50 people. Now, it has closer to 115 employees, according to President Wilmot “Wil” Lampros.
A number of the hires have been in sales, Lampros said.
“The education business has been relatively strong” the past few years, he said.
But it’s still a challenge for school districts to find the money to buy the company’s products, according to Lampros.
Aleks makes online software that figures out what individual students do and don’t know in any given course, and then instructs the students on those subjects they are most prepared to learn.
The cost is about $20 per month per student.
Software is offered for math, science and business courses and can be used for students of all ages.
The technology was developed at UC Irvine in the mid-1990s, with funding from the National Science Foundation.
“It’s been quite a slog,” Lampros said. “We’ve been at this for more than 10 years.”
The technology is licensed by UCI to Aleks.
“We’re very popular with UCI” thanks to the licensing fees the technology generates, he said.
Along with Parker, Travers’ Stacy Garcia represented Aleks in the lease. Irvine Co. represented itself.
Pimco Hire
Newport Beach bond fund manager Pacific Investment Management Co. has hired an executive to manage its commercial real estate portfolio.
Pimco, which also has a sizeable real estate portfolio, hired Devin Chen as an executive vice president and commercial real estate portfolio manager. He started this month and is based in the company’s Newport Beach office.
He previously was at McLean, Va.-based JER Partners, a private equity real estate investment company with $4 billion in investments.
Grubb Split
A second non-traded real estate fund that began operations under the banner of Santa Ana’s Grubb & Ellis Co. is going independent.
Grubb & Ellis Apartment REIT Inc., which has raised close to $200 million since 2006, said this month it plans to become a self-managed entity.
The fund plans to change its name to Apartment Trust of America Inc.
The newly independent company hasn’t disclosed where it will be based. It’s currently operating out of Grubb’s Santa Ana headquarters.
The news comes a few months after the fund announced deals for about $280 million worth of apartment buys in North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas and a related property management business.
Since that time, there’s been “fundamental differences of opinion as it relates to strategic direction of the REIT,” said Jeff Hanson, chief executive officer of Grubb & Ellis Equity Advisors, the brokerage’s main real estate investment and asset management subsidiary.
Grubb’s relationship with the fund will be terminated, according to the companies.
A similar breakup occurred about two years ago, when Healthcare Trust of America Inc., a healthcare-focused real estate fund that originally was known as Grubb & Ellis Healthcare REIT, went independent, changed its name and moved operations to Arizona.
Healthcare Trust has bought more than $340 million of medical properties this year. Last month, it paid Grubb $8 million to resolve partnership interest and other rights issues related to the 2008 split.
Grubb’s Hanson said the company remains “committed to the non-traded REIT industry.”
A second healthcare fund the brokerage is sponsoring has raised about $100 million.
