Los Angeles-based property manager and developer Arden Realty Inc. has snapped up 16 Orange County office buildings, following one of its biggest acquisitions.
Arden is buying 106 office buildings on the West Coast totaling 5.9 million square feet. Besides OC, the buildings are in San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and Salt Lake City.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Esti-mates have put the price north of $2 billion. The seller was Blackstone Group LP. The New York-based private equity firm, which just went public in a massive initial public offering, has been no stranger to local office deals in the past year.
The local portfolio is about 782,000 square feet spread among six complexes.
Local properties trading hands: the four-building Scenic Business Park, which totals 139,000 square feet in Costa Mesa; the four-building Harbor Corporate Park in Santa Ana, which totals 151,000 square feet; and the two-building South Coast Executive Center, totaling another 155,000 square feet.
If you thought the sale of those properties sounds familiar, you’re right. Blackstone bought the buildings from CarrAmerica Realty Corp. early last year as part of a $5.6 billion buy.
The deal is Arden’s largest acquisition to date since it was acquired by GE Real Estate a year ago.
In the past eight months, Arden has bought about $800 million worth of properties. It will own 17.2 million square feet of commercial office space once this transaction is done in July. It has another 4.6 million square feet it leases and manages.
It has also shed some local properties as of late, including two Fountain Valley offices that were sold to Mexico’s Cabi Developers about a month ago, part of a 33-building, $1.5 billion deal.
Bixby Buy Completed
Newport Beach’s Bixby Land Co. said it closed on the $345 million buy of 11 Orange County office buildings previously owned by Los Angeles-based Maguire Properties Inc. The deal, which totals 816,000 square feet plus a development site, was announced in April.
Maguire bought the offices, formerly part of Equity Office Properties Trust’s local portfolio, in February from Blackstone.
It appears to have been a great deal for Maguire. The landlord said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing it made a profit of $118.4 million on the sale.
Bixby bought the buildings through a venture with AFL-CIO Building Investment. Newport Beach’s Buchanan Street Partners helped put the loan together. Bixby plans to build a 100,000-square-foot office on the 3.5-acre development site on Red Hill Avenue in Irvine.
KBS Goes to Northern California
Newport Beach’s KBS Real Estate Investment Trust Inc. isn’t slowing down in the money raising department, or its pace of acquisitions.
The company is buying Bridgeway Technology Center, two single-story office and research and development buildings in Northern California totaling 187,268 square feet. It’s KBS’ second California acquisition.
The seller of the center in Newark, north of Milpitas, is SC Bridgeway Inc. of Sacramento.
KBS paid $50 million for the center. The company plans to fund the buy with proceeds from its ongoing sale of shares to investors.
Bridgeway Technology Center was built in 1996 and is full with two tenants, GE Homeland Protection Inc. and Risk Management Solutions Inc. The two tenants pay $4 million in rent annually.
KBS has raised about $430 million since kicking off its share offering in early 2006. KBS has bought about $400 million of offices to date. Its other California deal was in San Francisco.
Olen’s Restaurant Plan
Newport Beach’s Olen Properties Corp. has a restaurant complex in the works for Irvine.
Early plans call for a two-story restaurant complex to be built at the corner of Jamboree Road and Main Street. That’s the site of the commercial developer’s most notable office property, the two-tower Century Centre campus.
The bottom floor of the complex is tentatively set to hold a 6,500-square-foot upscale restaurant. The top floor would be a 4,300-square-foot restaurant and bar set to be called Andrei’s. It is named after the late Andrei Olenicoff, son of the company’s chief executive, Igor Olenicoff.
The complex could be built by next year, according to Olen’s Web site. It’s one of several projects in the works for Olen around John Wayne Airport in Irvine.
The company is moving ahead with approvals for three apartment complexes in the area.
Olen’s also trying to get approvals for apartment projects in Brea and Santa Ana.
