Newport Beach-based investor KBS Realty Advisors is nearing another blockbuster office purchase, this time in San Francisco.
A company affiliate is close to buying 201 Spear St., a 266,048-square-foot office in San Francisco’s South Financial District, according to multiple local reports.
News reports peg the price for the 19-story office at about $121 million, or roughly $450 per square foot. That would put the capitalization rate for the transaction at a little less than 5%.
The office was about 83% occupied as of a few months ago.
Hartford, Conn.-based Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers is selling the building, which it paid $62.5 million for in 1999.
A deal for the property would be the second big purchase for KBS and its affiliates in the past month.
In late October, the company’s KBS Real Estate Investment Trust III Inc. confirmed it was buying Citigroup Center, a 1.5-million-square-foot office in Chicago’s West Loop, for $425 million.
That deal is the most expensive skyscraper sale in Chicago since 2010, when KBS Realty paid $655 million for a 1.3-million-square-foot tower at 300 N. LaSalle St.
KBS and its affiliates currently own more than 1.3 million square feet of buildings in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
Von Karman Revamp
HighBrook Investment Management LP has put the finishing touches on a remodeling project for an office it bought in Irvine this year.
The New York-based company recently announced the rebranding of Von Karman Tech, a 100,603-square-foot building at 16842 Von Karman Ave., a few blocks from the District at Tustin Legacy shopping center.
HighBrook bought the building, previously known as Von Karman Business Park, in January for just under $10 million. It subsequently spent another $1.5 million on improvements, including construction of creative-office spec suites, upgraded lobbies and common areas and a new building facade.
At the time of the purchase, was named the Irvine office of Stream Realty Partners to handle leasing at the property. The new brokerage team has increased occupancy there from 63% to 82%.
Current tenants include Hosting.com and Lee & Sakahara Architects.
The building now has four available suites remaining that range in size from 2,938 square feet to 9,313 square feet and offer private offices, conference rooms and open collaborative areas, according to Stream, which also has its OC operations based in the building.
DTZ Appointment
The Orange County office of brokerage DTZ has a new managing director.
The Los Angeles-based company recently appointed Thomas Taylor as an executive vice president and to lead the company’s local office at Costa Mesa’s Plaza Tower.
Taylor was last with Transwestern. He worked before that for 26 years at Grubb & Ellis Co. His specialty is tenant advisory leasing for financial services companies. Large clients have included the home mortgage operations of Wells Fargo.
DTZ, a unit of Australia’s UGL Ltd., said it wants to up its presence in its OC and West Los Angeles offices. It currently has eight brokers in OC, plus another eight people on the office’s capital markets and facilities management teams.
“My goal is to aggressively grow the Orange County office both in the number of brokers and revenue,” Taylor said.
Retail Refi
Costa Mesa-based shopping center owner Donahue Schriber Realty Group said it has wrapped up $1.1 billion in financing deals.
The transactions include a $712 million secured bank term facility and a $100 million life insurance company mortgage. The company said that in connection with the bank facility, it executed a separate interest rate hedge with a peak amount of $285 million. The financings are tied to 38 of the company’s 74 owned assets.
The deal “allows Donahue Schriber to reduce borrowing costs, extend the maturity dates on a bulk of our loans through 2023, while also providing future portfolio flexibility for dispositions and acquisitions,” said Chief Executive Pat Donahue.
The company’s portfolio runs 12 million square feet and includes properties in California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
TechSpace Expansion
TechSpace Holding Co., an Aliso Viejo-based provider of flexible office space and technology services for smaller tenants, is opening a location in San Francisco.
The new office, at Union Square’s Grant & Geary Center building, is about 25,000 square feet on two floors. The space will hold 29 private office suites totaling 333 workstations.
The site is scheduled to open in January and will join existing TechSpace locations in New York City, Los Angeles, Aliso Viejo and Costa Mesa.
