Newport Beach-based Olen Properties has sold one of its local holdings, a business park in Santa Ana that it owned for less than three years.
The company—the second-largest commercial property owner in Orange County after the Irvine Company—late last month completed the sale of McFadden Centre, a 184,737-square-foot business park just off the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway on McFadden Avenue.
The 11-building complex sold for about $31.7 million, or nearly $172 per square foot.
The buyer is International Asset Management Holding Group, which is affiliated with Cypress-based distributor Sakura Paper and its owner, Joe Wen.
McFadden Centre includes eight flex and industrial buildings designed for smaller tenants—occupants average a little less than 2,000 square feet, with the largest running around 9,000 square feet.
The complex also has a multitenant retail building, as well as two buildings that hold a Burger King and Wienerschnitzel.
The retail component of the property played a part in Olen’s decision to sell—a rarity for the privately held company—according to Natalia Olenicoff-Ostensen, Olen’s vice president.
“Managing and leasing a retail project is clearly a different business than what we do best, which is office and multi-tenant space, and obviously our multi-family portfolio,” Olenicoff-Ostensen told the Business Journal via email.
Olen bought the Santa Ana property in early 2012 for $24.5 million.
“We were able to improve the property and lease up the space that was vacant, and then decided it took away too much of our available in-house property management,” Olenicoff-Ostensen said.
The property is now about 98% occupied, according to marketing materials.
Atlanta-Area Apartments
The sale of McFadden Centre was used in part to finance Olen’s latest acquisition, a pair of apartment complexes in the Atlanta area.
The apartment purchases, totaling about 700 units, are the first in Georgia for Olen, which has a multifamily portfolio that consists of about 10,000 apartments.
It also owns apartments in Florida, Arizona and Nevada, in addition to California.
The company said it is on the lookout for other deals in the Atlanta area this year, as well as in Orange County.
Michael McCann and Don Curtis of brokerage HFF represented Olen in the McFadden Centre sale, and Kurt Bruggeman of Lee and Associates Commercial Real Estate Service’s Irvine office represented the buyer.
