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NAI Capital Closes Pair of Deals for About $45 Million

The Newport Beach office of NAI Capital Commercial, best known locally for its sales of midsize office properties, has been closing some larger transactions as of late.

A duo of deals in the past month by NAI’s father-son team, George Economos and Steve Economos, went for about $45 million.

The Economos Group team, which also includes Geoff DeWolf and Matt Moore, worked on a $27.4 million investment sale of a 104,046-square-foot office portfolio in South County previously owned by the Murrel Co. of Newport Beach.

The three-building sale included a 48,143-square-foot building at 95 Argonaut in Aliso Viejo, as well as a two-building complex on Las Ramblas in Mission Viejo, which totaled 55,863 square feet. The three buildings are about 95% full. The portfolio went on the market late last year.

The buyer was a private, unnamed investor who’s based in Los Angeles but lives in Newport Beach, according to NAI senior vice president Steve Economos.

NAI represented Murrel. David Smith and Adam Wicker from the Irvine office of Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services Inc., represented the buyer.

Also trading hands recently: a 57,000-square-foot office building in Laguna Hills that sold for $18 million. NAI represented the buyer, Newport Beach-based Greenlaw Partners LLC.

Greenlaw has been on a local buying spree lately, snatching up close to $190 million worth of Orange County property in the past year. Its highest profile acquisition was Costa Mesa’s Triangle Square mall, which sold for a reported $46.5 million last fall.

The seller of the Laguna Hills property was a limited liability company set up by investment company Deuel International Group Inc. Deuel also counts the office at 24022 Calle de la Plata as its headquarters. Medical companies are the primary tenants at the building, which is next to Saddleback Memorial Medical Center.

“There is still a substantial amount of capital looking for deals,” Steve Economos said.

Buyers are being pickier about what they buy, though, focusing on well-located properties and buildings with below market rents, he said.

“Investors are still looking for value-add deals,” he said.


Heavy Hitters

Lee & Associates’ Newport Beach office just added a couple heavy hitters to its brokerage team.

John Collins and Ewan Choate joined Lee & Associates last month from Voit Commercial Brokerage LP. They’ll be working with one of Lee’s top brokers, senior vice president Mike Meisenbach, on a team that handles office investment, flex and industrial sales and leasing throughout OC.

The combined brokerage team will be known as the Meisenbach Collins Group.

Collins, who previously served as senior vice president at Voit’s Irvine office, focuses on low-rise office, flex and industrial properties. Big clients have included BKM Development Co. and Guthrie Development Co., both based in Costa Mesa. From 2004 to 2005, his sales and leases totaled $225 million, and consisted of more than 2 million square feet of space.

Choate is joining Lee & Associates as an associate. He also comes from Voit’s Irvine office, where he worked with Collins on deals.

There have been rumblings in the brokerage community that the velocity of deals being made locally has begun to slow, even though prices continue to go up. Collins said that he’s still seeing solid demand for office space, including from former employees of some of the area’s larger mortgage companies, who are looking to start up their own operations.


GardenWalk Loan

The Anaheim GardenWalk project, which is under construction, just got a big loan.

George Smith Partners Inc. of Los Angeles said it arranged a $210 million construction loan to finance the development of the 439,600-square-foot retail and entertainment center across from Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure theme parks.

The project is expected to cost $263 million in total. It is being developed by El Segundo-based Anaheim GW II LLC, a partnership of San Diego-based Excel Realty Holdings LLC and Pacific Coast Capital Partners LLC of El Segundo.

The property is 60% pre-leased, and is scheduled to open in mid-2008. Entitlements for the site also include plans for a transportation center, a 3,200-space parking facility, 387 timeshare units and three hotels.

Scott Bottles, Gary Mozer and David Bierman of George Smith Partners helped put the loan together.

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Mark Mueller
Mark Mueller
Mark is the Editor-in-Chief of the Orange County Business Journal, one of the premier regional business newspapers in the country. He’s the fifth person to hold the editor’s position in the paper’s long history. He oversees a staff of about 15 people. The OCBJ is considered a must-read for area business executives. The print edition of the paper is the primary source of local news for most of the Business Journal’s subscribers, which includes most of OC’s major corporate and community players. Mark’s been with the paper since 2005, and long served as the real estate reporter for the paper, breaking hundreds of commercial and residential real estate stories. He took on the editor’s position in 2018.
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