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Porsche Dealership is Spectrum’s Latest Auto Addition

Karma Automotive LLC isn’t the only high-end car company making notable real estate moves in the Irvine Spectrum area.

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based AutoNation Inc., the largest automotive retailer in the U.S., is building a three-story Porsche dealership on a Spectrum site next to the San Diego (5) Freeway.

The 57,000-square-foot project will include a second-floor mezzanine and a third-level, 37,000-square-foot parking deck, according to San Marcos-based Lusardi Construction Co., which is heading development.

The site is at 14500 Scientific Way about half a mile from the Spectrum-area CarMax dealership and AutoNation’s local Toyota dealership. It’s about two miles from the Jeronimo Road building that Costa Mesa-based luxury hybrid carmaker Karma bought in late March for a reported $56 million for its new headquarters.

AutoNation has also looked to build a Porsche dealership along Mariner’s Mile in Newport Beach but hasn’t been able to get its plans approved.

2-Year Warning

State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co.’s planned closure of its Irvine offices at the Park Place mixed-use campus will add a good amount of empty space to the airport area office market in a couple of years.

State Farm this month announced plans to close its Irvine office in 2019, a move that will affect 360 employees based there. The company leases a little more than 90,000 square feet in the 3351 Michelson Drive building, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.

The four-story office is owned by an investment group managed by Irvine-based LBA Realty. The midrise buildings that LBA runs at the campus total nearly 1.6 million square feet and are largely full, although the landlord last year lost another big tenant, CalTrans, which moved its local offices to Santa Ana, leaving roughly 100,000 square feet of space behind.

Recent additions to the campus’ roster of tenants are telecom giant Qualcomm, which will move some local operations this year to part of the space vacated by CalTrans.

LBA earlier this year proposed building a six-story, Gensler-designed office at Park Place that would front the San Diego (405) Freeway. Monthly rents for the potential 184,000-square-foot office at 3181 Michelson are listed at about $4.37 per square foot, according to CoStar.

The closure of State Farm’s Irvine office is part of a restructuring effort to shutter 11 offices across the country, affecting 4,200 workers. The work from the closed facilities will move to the company’s headquarters in Bloomington, Ill., and other offices, including in Atlanta, Dallas and Phoenix.

The closure is being announced now in order to give employees adequate time to consider their next moves, the company said.

Panasonic Proposal

The Lake Forest headquarters of Panasonic Avionics Corp. is up for sale.

An affiliate of Hartford, Conn.-based Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers recently listed 26200 Enterprise, a two-story building off Bake Parkway near the Foothill (241) Toll Road.

The nearly 145,000-square-foot property last sold in 2012 for $28.3 million, or about $195 per square foot.

A price in excess of $32 million, or $225 per square foot, is expected this time around. The building’s being marketed for sale by Cushman & Wakefield Inc.’s Jeff Cole, Ed Hernandez, Nico Mapolitano and Jay-Paul Lowry with the brokerage’s Irvine office.

Panasonic Avionics, an in-flight entertainment system manufacturer and a unit of Secaucus, N.J.-based Panasonic Corp. of North America, has leased the entire building for its main corporate headquarters until early 2022.

It’s one of seven buildings in the vicinity that Panasonic Avionics leases for local operations. They total about 600,000 square feet, and the tenant has put in millions to upgrade them, increasing the likelihood Panasonic will extend its lease at 26200 Enterprise, according to Cushman’s marketing materials.

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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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