No High-Rises in Irvine Co.’s Five-Year Plan; Sweet Deals in Newport
COMMERCIAL
Costa Mesa-based Essex Realty Management Inc. has been selected by A & B; Properties to manage that firm’s 895,000-square-foot Ontario Distribution Center complex in the Inland Empire.
The contract, one of the largest awarded to an Orange County firm this year, just about doubles Essex’s Inland Empire portfolio to roughly 2 million square feet. The new property will be overseen by Essex’s Riverside office.
A & B; Properties recently acquired the Ontario Distribution Center from Prudential Real Estate Advisors.
The contract brings Essex’s total property management portfolio to 6.2 million square feet.
Irvine Company Lowers Sights
The Irvine Company has no plans to add to its portfolio of high-rise office space for the next five years, according to Richard Sim, group president of the giant landowner’s commercial properties.
According to Art Barrett, editor of Martin Brower’s Orange County Report, Sim said there are no new high-rises in his five-year plan. Sim cited a couple of reasons for this surprising revelation:
n It takes roughly three years from the start of planning to completion of the building, a timeline that is too broad considering how rapidly market conditions in Orange County can change.
n A new building would have to fetch $2.75 per square foot to make financial sense, and while there are pockets in Orange County that are commanding those rates, the current spate of high-rise construction and the additional new space these projects will bring to market makes it difficult to command those rates over the long term. (Ironically, one of the pockets of Orange County that is fetching more than $2.75 per square foot is the Irvine Co.’s Newport Center office complex in Newport Beach, where the developer says it will never build another high-rise, according to Barrett. According to reports, the ring of high-rise complexes has commanded as much as $4 per square foot for some of that space.)
n Increasingly, tenants,especially dot-coms and other tech firms,are shying away from high-rise space in favor of campus complexes similar to Parker Properties’ The Summit Office Campus in Aliso Viejo and the Irvine Co.’s University Research Park.
LeadersOnline Signs Lease
Despite the doom and gloom atmosphere surrounding a lot of dot-com firms,and landlords’ growing wariness of these firms,some still see them as attractive tenants.
Cornerstone Development Partners Inc. is apparently one of those landlords. The Laguna Niguel-based company recently signed LeadersOnline Inc., an Internet-based executive-search firm, to a five-year, $2.5 million lease for 24,551 square feet of space at its two-story building in Aliso Viejo.
The building, at 135 Columbia, will house LeadersOnline’s corporate headquarters beginning in January, when the subsidiary of Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. moves out of its current space in Irvine.
Doug Mathews and Gary Allen of Grubb & Ellis’ Newport Beach office represented Cornerstone. Jeff Osborn and John Gallivan of Cushman Realty represented LeadersOnline.
RESIDENTIAL
Newport Beach homes starting from $100?
It isn’t quite what you’d expect, but it’s true. Given the rapid escalation of home prices in Orange County, the folks over at the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach are stepping in with a home sales program starting from $100. The homes, meticulously decorated and designed, will be constructed using only the finest materials: sugar, flour, eggs and candy.
That’s right, they’re gingerbread houses.
Four Seasons Hotel Executive Chef Michel Pieton and Pastry Chef Sheldon Millet last week sold the tasty homes as part of their Gingerbread Village Wonderland event, a fundraiser for Toys for Tots, which provides toys to underprivileged children during the holiday season.
Besides the homes, Gingerbread Village Wonderland featured buildings, bridges and streets.
Whittlesey Doyle Gets Chapman Heights
Local land brokerage firm Whittlesey Doyle Inc. has been tapped by developer Communities Southwest to take over marketing of the company’s 2,100-unit Chapman Heights masterplanned community in Yucaipa.
Irvine-based Whittlesey Doyle replaces another local firm, Costa Mesa-based O’Donnell/Atkins Co., as the lead marketing and land brokerage company on the project. Four land deals have been completed at the masterplanned golf-course community, two of which were brokered by Les Whittlesey, a principal with Whittlesey Doyle.
Anaheim-based Communities Southwest also selected Whittlesey Doyle to oversee marketing of its Crowne Hill masterplanned community in Temecula. That community, consisting of roughly 800 approved units, will be handled by Tom Doyle, the other principal of the firm. Richmond American Homes already has purchased an undisclosed number of lots in that community.
