An investment group that includes Irvine-based real estate investor and developer Greenlaw Partners is nearing a deal to buy the massive Bank of America office campus in Brea.
Greenlaw Partners is partnering with New York-based investment firm Cerberus Capital Management LP to buy the 637,503-square-foot office property at 275 Valencia Ave., according to real estate sources familiar with the transaction.
Terms of the sale, which should close later this month, have not been disclosed.
It’s believed the office is trading hands in the $110 million range, or roughly $173 per square foot, according to sources.
A deal near that price would be Orange County’s largest single-building office sale of the year, topping last month’s estimated $95 million sale of the Oracle Tower in Irvine to an affiliate of Boston-based insurance company John Hancock (see Commercial Real Estate Special Report, page 23).
Brokers with the Irvine office of Cushman & Wakefield Inc. have the listing for the Brea property but could not be reached for comment.
Officials with Greenlaw declined to comment on the rumored sale.
Greenlaw and its financial partners have already spent upward of $100 million to buy OC office and industrial properties this year, including deals in Orange, San Juan Capistrano and Anaheim.
The investor, founded in 2003, has grown its commercial real estate portfolio to more than 4 million square feet over the past decade.
Its best-known local property is the Costa Mesa food and entertainment center The Triangle.
Long-Term Lease
The Brea office expected to soon change hands is on a 31.6-acre property near the La Floresta residential development on Imperial Highway.
It is the largest leased, single-user office building in OC, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s marketing materials. It’s designed as a headquarters with executive offices, an administration area, and call center space.
Bank of America has occupied the building since it was built about 30 years ago and uses it as an operations facility. The bank employs about 3,000 people in Brea and was the its largest employer as of 2010, according to the city.
Bank of America has a lease at the building that runs through 2023, according to regulatory filings by New York-based Lexington Realty Trust, the building’s current owner. The tenant inked its latest renewal for the property about three years ago.
Officials for Lexington—an investor that has a market value of nearly $2.6 billion—said this year that they expected the Brea office to be its largest sale of the year.
Lexington bought the Brea building in 2007. It is the real estate investor’s largest property, according to its latest annual report, which valued it at about $87 million.
