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Land Broker O’Donnell/Atkins Upbeat on Recent Deals



RESIDENTIAL

O’Donnell/Atkins isn’t going anywhere, execs at the Irvine-based brokerage would like everyone to know.

The company is coming off one of its best months, closing three deals totaling more than $125 million in land sales.

Along with a 130-acre housing development deal in San Diego County, it represented the sellers for two of Orange County’s higher-end mobile parks.

The 94 residents of San Clemente’s Capistrano Shores took ownership of their mobile home park in a buy from Amherst College, with the property’s land making up about $60 million of the estimated $100 million deal.

In the second deal, Newport Beach’s Saunders Property Co. bought Huntington Shorecliffs, a 304-home complex in Huntington Beach, from longtime owners in a deal valued at more than $50 million.

It’s good news for local land brokerages, which have been looking for signs of a pickup in business, according to Tom Reimers, O’Donnell/Atkins executive vice president.

The recent deals show “there is liquidity in the market for the right assets,” Reimers said.

Buyers are starting to come out of the woodwork and the company has a few more big deals in the works, he said.

That’s a welcome sign after a tough 2007 for O’Donnell/Atkins, and land brokerages in general. After a strong 2005 and 2006, the company saw a drop in business last year, as the housing market went south and buyers and sellers remained far apart in valuations of Southern California land.

Part of the drop was due to a slowdown in business between the company and its longtime partner, Irvine-based master developer SunCal Cos. When Randy Teteak, the former president of O’Donnell/Atkins, joined SunCal in 2006, it was expected there’d be a lot more collaboration. But the opposite happened.

The slow 2007 had some in the industry whispering that the company might be on the way out, Reimers said. That’s not the case, though he expects there will be some shakeouts in the industry.

“For us, this is the time to gain market share,” he said.

O’Donnell/Atkins recently renewed its lease at its 7,100-square-foot headquarters on Von Karman Avenue. It’s also been making some promotions. Three brokers, Roland Chavez, Steve Jones and Joe Percival, were just made principals.


COMMERCIAL

San Francisco-based fuel distributor IPC (USA) Inc. is the latest to sign a lease at The Irvine Company’s new office towers in the Irvine Spectrum.

The company signed an 8,044-square-foot lease at 20 Pacifica, one of two 15-story towers the Irvine Co. built along the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway. Drew Netherton, a tenant representation broker from CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., represented IPC. The Irvine Co. represented itself.

IPC is a wholesaler of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined petroleum for the Western U.S. The company is relocating its local office from Orange.

The five-year lease is valued at about $1.5 million, according to CB Richard Ellis. That would put the average monthly rent at about $3.11 per square foot, below what the Irvine Co. had been asking when the buildings first were going up.

In late 2006, the Irvine Co.’s Web site listed the cheapest space in the 15-story towers at $3.60 per square foot a month. It no longer posts asking rents for the buildings on its site.


Bixby Buy

Bixby Land Co. of Irvine has picked up another local industrial building.

The developer and real estate investor paid $18.5 million, or about $162 per square foot, for an 114,500-square-foot industrial building in Tustin.

Newport Beach-based developer Investment Building Group put up the building in 2005. It was one of the larger industrial properties to go up that year.

The 6-acre property, at 1111 Bell Ave., is full with two tenants signed to long-term leases. Paragon Luggage Inc., one of the largest independent makers of luggage and travel products, has its headquarters there. Sterling Collision Center, a BMW-focused repair center, also takes up about 58,400 square feet at the site.

The deal is the 12th industrial buy for Bixby in the past 18 months. Those deals total more than $300 million, according to the company.


Diebold Consolidates

Diebold Inc., a Canton, Ohio-based supplier of ATMs and voting machines, just signed a lease for 27,980 square feet at 6181 Chip Ave. in Cypress, at the Warland Cypress Business Center.

The company is consolidating its 80 area employees from two existing buildings in Brea and Cypress to the new building, which has both office and warehouse space.

Diebold was represented by officials with UGL Equis in the lease, while CB Richard Ellis’ Brian DeRevere represented landlord Warland Investment Ltd.

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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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