Irvine-based master developer SunCal Cos. has made one of its largest East Coast acquisitions in years, picking up a partially completed mixed-use project in Northern Virginia.
The company bought Harbor Station, a 1,920-acre project in Virginia’s Prince William County that had been in receivership since 2009.
The project is along the Potomac River, near the Quantico Marine base. It’s about an hour’s drive from Washington, D.C.
The site is described as one of the few remaining large, undeveloped parcels along Interstate 95 in that region.
Harbor Station is approved for about to 4,000 residential units and 3.7 million square feet of commercial uses, according to reports. It also includes a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course.
SunCal is expected to start selling lots to builders as soon as next year.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that SunCal paid about $55 million for the bank-owned land, well below what its prior owners spent for the property.
Harbor Station’s prior owner was a partnership between two Virginia-based developers. The partners had spent close to $235 million on the project, including taking on $115 million in debt from San Francisco’s Wells Fargo & Co., according to the Wall Street Journal.
SunCal officials said they are seeking out more acquisition and development opportunities throughout the eastern and southern regions and the Midwest.
The developer is better known locally of late for its legal battle with bankrupt financier Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. over numerous stalled California developments, including San Clemente’s Marblehead Coastal residential and retail project.
It recently opened an office in New York City to better target opportunities on the East Coast, officials said.
The company’s also been buying land in Chicago and Las Vegas in recent months.
The Wall Street Journal reported this month that SunCal is being funded this time around by “numerous hedge funds and private-equity firms that are eager to get into the land-speculation business while values are so low.”
The investors are said to be willing to overlook the steep losses that SunCal and its partners sustained in the last housing crash because of the company’s otherwise strong track record in land development.
On the Block
Newport Beach-based Greenlaw Partners is looking to sell a midsize office it owns near John Wayne Airport in Irvine.
The real estate investor and developer recently put its 2955 Main St. office up for sale with an asking price of just under $11 million.
The building last traded hands for about $9.9 million in 2006, according to records.
The roughly 34,000-square-foot building is across the street from the Irvine Company’s Jamboree Center office complex and is fully leased.
Tenants at the three-story building include hotel developer R.D. Olson Development—which sold the building in 2006—and Irvine-based law firm Wolf Firm, which inked a 16,000-square-foot lease at the building a year ago.
Irvine-based brokerage 360 Commercial Partners has the listing for the building, which is being marketed at a sale price of about $324 per square foot, and includes the assumption of a $3.5 million loan.
Vegas Flip
Newport Beach’s MIG Real Estate appears to have made a healthy profit on a Las Vegas office property it owned for less than a year.
The real estate investor, also known as Merage Investment Group Real Estate, recently sold Sunset Pilot Plaza, a roughly 100,000-square-foot office property in the city’s Hughes Airport Center business park that it bought last October.
It just sold the building to Minneapolis-based Ameriprise Financial Inc., which plans to use the building as a call center that will employ about 300 people, according to local reports.
The Las Vegas Sun reported that the building traded for about $14.5 million, or about $145 per square foot. MIG Real Estate is said to have paid $8.6 million for the office last year.
The Sunset Pilot Plaza was the first Las Vegas property bought by MIG Real Estate, which was previously known as Stoneridge Capital Partners, since it ramped up its acquisition plans about two years ago.
Since then, it has acquired four other properties in the area. Its current office portfolio in Las Vegas runs about 470,000 square feet, and includes three other business parks and a shopping center.
“We will continue to closely monitor Las Vegas market conditions and adjust our acquisition and disposition strategies accordingly,” Chief Executive Greg Merage said in a statement.
MIG Real Estate said it has completed about $300 million in acquisitions over the past two years. In addition to Nevada, it has bought properties in California, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii and Alberta, Canada.
