Doctors looking for space in Orange County’s tight medical office market will get another option when a center opens in Tustin later this year.
Newport Avenue Medical Plaza is a 20,935-square-foot medical office building at 12791 Newport Ave. in Tustin.
Newport Avenue Medical is about 22% preleased, brokers said. Tenants could include dentists, eye doctors, physical therapists and sports medicine physicians, according to Andrew White, a broker in CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s Anaheim office.
White and CB Richard Ellis broker Rick Warner are marketing the project for Irvine’s ACS Development Group, the developer and contractor.
Tenant improvement work will start in mid-September, White said. He said interest in the center has been strong.
“I think doctors prefer to commit to the leases after a substantial amount of construction is already completed,” White said. “I think (doctors) have a harder time committing to a prelease situation in this type of industry.”
Newport Avenue Medical is north of Tustin Hospital, in an area that is undergoing a big makeover.
White said street medians have been redone in the Newport Avenue and Irvine Boulevard area. Other developments have cropped up, including a strip mall featuring a Trader Joe’s grocery store.
Warner and White are marketing the facility through postcards and canvassing older medical buildings to identify potential tenants, among other tactics.
There are several medical office projects in the works for central OC.
Enterprise Commercial Development Inc. of Lake Forest just paid $13 million to The Irvine Company for 4.2 acres zoned for medical office space in the Irvine Spectrum. The price,more than $3 million an acre,is comparable to prices for land slated for homebuilding.
Enterprise is expected to start work later this year on a three-story, 67,000-square-foot medical condominium complex. The units will target dentists, psychologists and other doctors.
“There is a lack of product here,we’re trying to fill it,” said CB Richard Ellis broker Jon Marchiorlatti, who represented Enterprise in the land buy with Chris Bates and David Bolt.
The vacancy rate for medical office buildings in OC was about 1% earlier this year, according to Kevin McNeil of Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Brokerage Co.’s Newport Beach office. He said office buildings for sale near hospitals are snatched up quickly.
McNeil and Matthew Kipp, another broker at Marcus & Millichap, handled the $7.3 million sale of Warner Village Medical in May.
Warner Village is a 33,070-square-foot medical office facility near Fountain Valley Regional Hospital Medical Center. Warner International Network LLC, a private investment group, bought Warner Village. The building is fully occupied.
Other medical real estate deals during the past year included Newport Beach-based Greenlaw Partners LLC’s $12.3 million acquisition of a 61,640-square-foot building in Yorba Linda. Greenlaw is a real estate investor.
Olive Crest Treatment Centers paid $7.4 million to a partnership that includes George Okida for a 55,187-square-foot Santa Ana building.
And Irvine-based Boureston Development Inc. spent $3.7 million on a two-story building in Brea that it’s converting to medical use.
