Freedom Communications Inc., owner of the Orange County Register, has moved its corporate executives into the daily newspaper’s offices in Santa Ana and put its one-time headquarters and another building in Irvine up for sale.
The two Irvine properties, totaling a little more than 32,000 square feet, were recently listed for sale at a combined price of about $5.2 million.
The buildings include 17666 Fitch, a roughly 16,000-square-foot office that had been serving as Freedom’s headquarters. Freedom owns the Register, six other newspapers, and various specialty publications and websites.
The single-story property, which includes a sizable courtyard and underground parking, has an asking price of about $2.7 million, or $170 per square foot.
Also on the market is 17702 Cowan, a similarly sized, two-story office near the Fitch property. It has an asking price of a little under $2.5 million, or about $150 per square foot.
The two buildings are in the Irvine Business Complex, a few blocks from the intersection of MacArthur Boulevard and the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway.
The properties are being listed for sale as separate offerings but could be sold together to a potential owner-user looking for a larger office campus, according to marketing materials from the Newport Beach office of CBRE Group Inc., whose private capital group has the listing for the offices.
CBRE marketing materials estimated the two buildings, each of which are more than 30 years old, have a combined replacement cost of about $10 million.
The building on Fitch at one time housed executives who ran various divisions of Freedom, including its TV and magazines businesses, as well as regional groups of newspapers.
The company sold most of those assets before Aaron Kushner and his Boston-based 2100 Trust bought the Register and the rest of its media portfolio. That sale, valued by media watchers at about $200 million, was announced in June. Kushner took the title of publisher of the Register in August.
Any potential investor will buy the Irvine offices without tenants. Freedom moved its offices out of the two locations a few months ago.
Personnel were moved to Freedom’s largest-remaining office in Orange County, the 175,000-square-foot Santa Ana headquarters of the Register. That five-story building, located at 625 N. Grand Ave., just off the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway, is not believed to be on the sales block.
Efficiencies
The relocation of the Irvine staff to Santa Ana should add efficiencies to Freedom’s operations, according to Eric Morgan, a spokesperson for the company.
“There are opportunities to have staff together in the same physical space,” Morgan said.
Corporate staff and the Register will be more in sync and more accessible to each other, he said.
The sale of the buildings also is expected to bring a slight reduction in Freedom’s operating costs.
Kushner has been putting money into the Register since taking over paper, adding hires for sales and the newsroom. A rugged stretch that included a stint in bankruptcy had seen the paper cut staff by about half over the past decade.
Kushner has set out to improve the Register’s coverage in hopes that increases in circulation and advertising sales will follow.
“All we really are at the end of the day is deep believers in the importance and value and power of major newspapers like the Orange County Register,” Kushner told the Business Journal earlier this month. “I don’t think that’s a particularly magic formula—it’s more a belief system.”
The Register is believed to have been operating profitably at the time of its sale. Profits have likely narrowed due to the recent new hires and a decision to close the Register’s interactive group, which was dedicated to sales and brought in about 10% of advertising revenue, according to a source familiar with the situation.
