An affiliate of Newport Beach-based KBS Realty Advisors is under contract to buy one of the more prominent office complexes in downtown San Jose.
The company’s KBS Real Estate Investment Trust III said in regulatory filings this month that it entered into a purchase agreement to buy Almaden Financial Plaza, a three-building office property in San Jose that runs about 416,127 square feet.
The sale price for the complex is $150 million, or nearly $360 per square foot, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The plaza’s buildings run between eight and 12 stories. The property is 94% leased to technology, legal and financial companies, among others.
Belmont-based Embarcadero Capital Partners LLC is selling the property, which it has owned for about three years, according to local reports.
The buildings last changed hands in 2012 in a lender-driven deal when the building had more than $110 million worth of debt tied to it.
The purchase would add to KBS’ office holdings in downtown San Jose, where vacancy rates are close to 16%, down from about 20% a year ago. Average monthly rents run a little more than $3.30 per square foot for better offices in that submarket, according to local reports.
The same nontraded REIT paid $116.7 million late last year, or about $377 per square foot, to purchase Ten Almaden, a 17-story, roughly 309,000-square-foot tower not too far from its latest planned purchase.
KBS Realty and its affiliates also own several buildings in San Jose’s more suburban areas.
Cornerstone Backing
Lincoln Property Co. has found a financial partner for its 37-acre creative-office development project at Tustin Legacy.
The Dallas-based real estate investor and developer, which has local offices in Irvine, was selected by the city of Tustin in June as the master developer for the Cornerstone at Tustin Legacy project.
Cornerstone is slated to have 760,000 square feet of creative-office space, along with several other uses, including retail. A time frame for groundbreaking hasn’t been disclosed.
The developer and the city hosted a broker event at one of the blimp hangars at the former Marine base last week to discuss initial plans for the project.
No potential tenants have been announced for any of the proposed buildings, but the development now has one other key element on board: a source of funding.
Lincoln Property officials said this month that their capital partner for the Tustin project is Alcion Ventures LP, a real estate private equity firm based in Boston.
Alcion has worked with Lincoln Property on several other projects in Southern California, primarily in Los Angeles County.
Abbey Co. Refi
Garden Grove-based real estate investor Abbey Co. said it got a $310 million loan to help recapitalize its portfolio of Southern California buildings.
The company, which owns 34 buildings in the region totaling about 3 million square feet, said it got the bridge financing from San Francisco-based Prime Finance.
The loan proceeds were used to refinance two maturing CMBS loans and to provide capital for Abbey Co. to maximize cash flow across the portfolio, the company said in a news release.
Nebo Capital in Los Angeles arranged the interest-only loan, and L.A.-based law firm Sklar Kirsh LLP represented Abbey Co. in the transaction.
Abbey Co.’s OC portfolio totals about 350,000 square feet and includes properties in Anaheim, Aliso Viejo, Garden Grove and Orange, according to its website.
The company—previously based in Long Beach—sold some of its larger OC holdings, including offices in Brea and Orange, in 2014.
