JPMorgan Chase & Co. is planning to move its local offices within Irvine after signing a long-term lease last week.
New York-based JPMorgan leased about 70,000 square feet of space on three floors at 3 Park Plaza in Jamboree Center.
The company, which runs the third-largest bank here by deposits, is moving workers from sites around Irvine, most from a former Washington Mutual Inc. campus a few blocks away.
JPMorgan inherited the campus when it acquired Seattle-based Washington Mutual in late 2008.
The company estimates about 350 employees will wind up working at 3 Park Plaza, one of five towers that make up Irvine Company’s Jamboree Center.
The move is “going to consolidate our space and provide room to build out our operations in Orange County for the foreseeable future,” said Paul Kaufman, Chase’s regional president for middle-market commercial banking.
Terms of the seven-year lease weren’t disclosed. Irvine Co. has been advertising monthly rents at Jamboree Center in the $2.10 to $2.65 per square foot range.
The move adds to a long decline at Washington Mutual’s former Irvine hub, which now goes by the name Quintana.
In 2004, WaMu occupied all four office buildings at the campus at Main Street and Von Karman Avenue, largely for its mortgage operations.
The savings and loan had 415,597 square feet in all at the site. WaMu peaked at about 3,500 OC workers, with many of them in Irvine.
The mortgage downturn that started in 2007 brought a series of cuts to the Irvine operation.
JPMorgan now leases about 110,000 square feet in the complex, which is mostly empty.
The building is believed to be in the hands of a court-appointed receiver.
A partnership headed up by Los Angeles-based Maguire Properties Inc. acquired the campus from WaMu in 2004 for $151 million. WaMu leased back the campus from Maguire under a long-term deal.
Maguire had a 20% stake in the property, with Macquarie Office Trust, part of Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd., owning the rest of the campus.
In early 2009, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.—acting as receiver for WaMu—let go of the majority of the Quintana lease. That reduced occupancy at the mid-rise office campus by about 250,000 square feet, leaving it 40% full.
The lease relinquishment prompted Maguire to say it planned to default on a $106 million loan tied to the property.
JPMorgan took over WaMu for $1.9 billion after the FDIC seized the thrift.
The company’s Chase bank unit has been building on WaMu’s consumer deposits and home loans business.
Absorbing WaMu gave Chase the county’s third-largest share of deposits at about $8 billion.
It has been building up business banking on its own as WaMu had focused on consumers and home loans.
In September, Chase recruited three commercial banking executives to build its commercial banking unit.
Chase hopes to grow to about 15 senior commercial bankers in the next three years or so. The commercial banking unit will have about 70 workers after adding support staff.
“We’re here to grow,” Kaufman said in an earlier Business Journal interview.
The new offices will serve to bolster expansion and serve as a centralized location for Chase’s local retail and commercial lending operations, Kaufman said last week.
Chase’s move to Jamboree Center is similar to what Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp did in a lease last year, after it took over thrift operations of Newport Beach’s Downey Financial Corp.
U.S. Bank opted to relocate Downey’s operations to Maguire’s Park Place campus in Irvine as the FDIC moved to sell Downey’s headquarters.
Reporter Mark Mueller contributed to this story.
