A two-building office complex along Beach Boulevard in Huntington Beach is being eyed as a potential apartment redevelopment site, following a recent sale.
Evangelical Free Church of Huntington Beach recently sold the 3.2-acre parcel at 19891 Beach Blvd., near the intersection of Adams Avenue, about two miles from the ocean.
The site holds two offices totaling about 58,000 square feet.
The church occupies space at the buildings, among other tenants.
Terms of the sale weren’t disclosed. The buyer of the building was a development company listed as DCO BeachWalk LLC, according to brokers with the Irvine office of Voit Real Estate Services.
The site is expected to be redeveloped as apartments, with plans currently before the city.
Existing tenants at the offices are under short-term leases, according to Voit Vice President Kathy Fuller, who represented the church in the sale.
Redevelopment work could start as soon as next summer if plans move ahead as planned.
State records show DCO BeachWalk registered under the same address as Denver-based UDR Inc., a big national apartment owner and developer that counts a $5.7 billion market value.
UDR’s role and financial stake in the proposed Beach Boulevard project has not been disclosed.
Newport Beach-based real estate developer Province Group also is said to be involved in the project.
UDR, which owned nearly 4,500 apartments in Orange County as of the start of the year, already has one big apartment project in the works in Huntington Beach.
In July it announced plans to develop apartments at the Village at Bella Terra, a mixed-use project going up on Edinger Avenue, next to the Bella Terra shopping center.
The 467-apartment complex is estimated to cost about $150 million, according to UDR, and would be the first big apartment complex to go up in that area in more than 20 years.
Elsewhere in Orange County, UDR said it plans to develop Los Alisos, an $87 million, 320-home community in Mission Viejo. That project would go up next to the 110,000-square-foot Mission Foothill Marketplace shopping center.
NAIOP Hire
The current head of the Orange County and Los Angeles chapter of NAIOP, a commercial real estate development trade association, has a new full-time job in Texas.
Bill Flaherty was named president of Dallas-based Rosewood Property Co., a unit of real estate investment company Rosewood Corp. He’ll be sizing up investment opportunities for Rosewood Property, which owns land in the Plano, Garland and Las Colinas, all of which are in Texas.
Flaherty is serving as the president of NAIOP SoCal’s Orange County chapter through the end of this year. He was previously a senior vice president at Newport Beach-based Irvine Company. Before that he was one of the top local executives for Los Angeles-based Maguire Properties Inc.
Flaherty also was a senior vice president at Rosewood Property Co. from 1984 to 1990.
Bear Bankruptcy
An Irvine Spectrum building that serves as the headquarters for Herrington Teddy Bear Co. has fallen into bankruptcy, according to court records.
8945 Research Drive LLC, an entity controlled by the family-owned business that runs Herrington Teddy Bear Co., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month.
Herrington Teddy Bear, which makes custom teddy bears and got its start in 1986, did not file for bankruptcy itself.
The petition lists the LLC as having mini- mal assets, and as much as $10 million in liabilities.
The company paid $3 million for the 9,900-square-foot Irvine Spectrum building, according to a 2005 Business Journal profile. The office is alongside the San Diego (I-405) Freeway in a business park built by Irvine-based Bacchus Development.
The building, which serves as the company’s creative showroom and world headquarters, was listed as being up for sale as of last week, although no asking price was listed, according to CoStar Group Inc.
Retail Switch
The Irvine office of Colliers International has hired away a big retail leasing group from the local offices of Grubb & Ellis Co.
Colliers recently named Mark Baziak as director of retail leasing for its Greater Los Angeles division. He and most of his team, which includes Terrison Quinn, Peter Spragg, Mark Joens, Casey Mahony and Jesika Tran-Nguyen, will be based out the brokerage’s Irvine office.
Baziak last year was named the No. 1 retail broker nationally for Grubb & Ellis, according to Colliers.
