The office division of New York-based private equity giant Blackstone Group has added another big office complex in Costa Mesa to its growing Orange County portfolio.
Equity Office Management LLC last month closed on the purchase of Redhill Center, a three-building, 226,000-square-foot office park, according to property records.
The 34-acre campus, previously known as Legacy Redhill Center, was sold by the commercial division of Foster City-based Legacy Partners.
Terms of the sale were not immediately disclosed. Legacy Partners bought the campus in 2005 for a reported $44.8 million, or just under $200 per square foot.
The two-story buildings at the property run between 64,000 and 84,500 square feet. They combine for an occupancy rate of a little under 70%, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
Larger tenants include General Electric, Profit Recovery Partners, and HD Construction Supply Group Inc. Newspaper OC Weekly’s headquarters also are at the complex, which includes buildings at 2955, 2975 and 2995 Red Hill Ave.
The buildings are a few blocks from the western edge of John Wayne Airport, near the intersection of the Costa Mesa (55) and Corona del Mar (73) freeways.
It was the only Orange County office property in Legacy Partners’ portfolio, according to the company’s website.
Legacy has apartment holdings in OC and owns a retail center near South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa that it said it will turn into a high-end apartment complex next year.
The company has also partnered with Newport Beach-based KBS Realty Advisors to buy apartment complexes across the country through a nontraded real estate investment trust (see related story, page 3).
Local Holdings
The purchase of the Red Hill offices adds another notable property to Chicago-based Equity Office’s portfolio in and around the South Coast Metro area.
It owned about 1.3 million square feet of office space in the vicinity prior to the latest deal, much of which reflects purchases made in Costa Mesa and Santa Ana in the past two years.
Other deals this year include the $129 million purchase of the Griffin Towers office complex in March and the $82.5 million purchase of the 1 and 2 MacArthur Place towers in a deal that closed in January. The properties are in Santa Ana.
It also bought the South Coast Corporate Center, a three-building, 370,500-square-foot office complex in Costa Mesa near South Coast Plaza, in a deal valued at nearly $75 million last year.
Equity Office is the second largest office landlord in the South Coast Metro business district, according to Business Journal estimates, with a portfolio rivaling that of Costa Mesa-based C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, whose high-end offices sit across the street from its South Coast Plaza.
The just-purchased Red Hill Avenue offices are just outside the boundaries of the South Coast Metro area, a collection of 82 buildings primarily in North Costa Mesa and South Santa Ana that total nearly 8 million square feet.
