RESIDENTIAL
The lights are starting to be turned on at Astoria, a condominium tower complex built by Canada? Intergulf Development Group at Lennar Corp.? Central Park West development in Irvine.
Top floor units at one of the towers, which overlook the San Diego (I-405) Freeway near Jamboree Road, were recently used by the American Society of Interior Designers for its annual Orange County home tour, which benefits the OC Performing Art Center.
Nearly 40 designers decorated four penthouse lofts and two other units at the building for the home tour. That added plenty of traffic?aid to be 20,000 people during the month?o the 40-acre development that? been in limbo for more than a year.
Lennar still hasn? decided on a date when it will be ramping up sales for the low- and mid-rise homes that have been built at Central Park West, opting instead to mothball the project until the market recovers.
The 240-unit Astoria complex, which sits on the back corner of the Central Park West property near the freeway, isn? waiting out the market. Sales are now in full go mode, according to Michael Chious, general sales and marketing manager for Intergulf.
The company? made a few dozen sales, and move-ins are expected to begin early this summer, Chious said. Among other incentives, the developer was offering a new Lexus to the first buyer of one of the fully-designed penthouses on display the past month.
Prices have dropped to the $400,000s for the most-affordable units, which are seeing plenty of competition from re-sales at another nearby condo tower.
Some 35 units in Bosa Development Corp.? towers at the Park Place campus, located on the other side of Jamboree Road, are listed for resale according to brokerage data. About a dozen of those listings are short sales, with the lowest-priced unit now being offered at $350,000.
COMMERCIAL
Corporate changes at Irvine-based Sperry Van Ness are providing plenty of hiring opportunities for some of OC? other commercial brokerages.
Sperry Van Ness announced earlier this year it was folding five brokerage offices?ncluding its Irvine office?nto its West L.A. office. Competing local brokerages have snapped up at least a dozen ex-Sperry brokers and other staff members in recent months.
Among those brokerages with multiple Sperry Van Ness hires are the Newport Beach office of NAI Capital Commercial and the Irvine office of Colliers International.
NAI Capital announced late last month that it added two senior vice presidents from Sperry: office and retail specialist Roger Niez and industrial specialist Doug Wubbena.
Those two were among seven new broker hires NAI Capital? made in the past few weeks, according to Brian Childs, executive vice president and branch manager.
The Irvine office of Colliers International said it has hired five ex-Sperry Van Ness brokers since February. The most recent additions were retail investment specialist Mehran Foroughi and apartment broker Pat Swanson.
Sperry Van Ness ranked No. 16 in the Business Journal? most recent of largest commercial brokerages in April, based on its 2008 business.
We estimated the company had about 25 local brokers prior to the decision of its largest franchisee owner, Portland-based Guardian Management LLC, to consolidate operations in Carlsbad, Irvine, Ontario, San Diego and Woodland Hills.
With its brokers leaving, Sperry Van Ness now is looking to sublease as much as 9,700 square feet of space at its Irvine headquarters at the Waterfield Tower on Von Karman Avenue, according to CoStar Group Inc.
Safari Sale
The Safari Technology Park, a three-building office park in the Irvine Spectrum, has traded hands in one of the larger investment sales OC? seen so far this year.
The office park, at 300 to 320 Goddard Way, totals 47,815 square feet and counts 12 suites. The two-story buildings at the complex count eight tenants, with leases expiring during the next six years, according to marketing materials for the property.
The buyer was an Irvine-based investor that uses the GFE Goddard Investment LLC name. The seller was Edison Spectrum Partners LLC, also of Irvine.
The project was completed in 2002; Edison Spectrum had owned the property since its development.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The property was last listed for sale at $13.5 million, or about $282 per square feet, and at a 7.8% capitalization rate, according to marketing materials. Earlier, the project had a $16.7 million asking price.
Michael Hartel, Dan Vittone and Alan Pekarcik, of Voit Commercial Brokerage LP? Irvine office, represented the seller. Richard Pincott of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.? Newport Beach office represented the buyer.
