Why Buyers Aren’t Snapping Up Catellus Residential
COMMERCIAL
Birtcher Commercial Development has launched construction of a 156,000-square-foot office complex in Lake Forest, targeting growing corporations seeking a campus-style setting.
The $21 million Palm Terrace office park, at 25521-25541 Commerce Centre Drive, will feature three two-story buildings, ranging from 42,400 to 62,600 square feet. Completion is scheduled for October; it is being built by Oltmans Construction Co., Whittier.
“South Orange County has rapidly emerged as a dynamic market for high-end and high-technology facilities aimed at satisfying the needs of such growth companies as telecommunications and software firms,” said Greg Matthess, vice president of Laguna Niguel-based Birtcher Commercial. “Moreover, there is a growing trend of these types of companies relocating out of high-rise buildings into low-rise office environments that afford greater space efficiencies and employee interaction.”
Matthess said the concrete tilt-up buildings will help fill the void created by the lack of construction during the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially since much of the vacant office space in South Orange County has been substantially filled up during the recent boom.
PLC Buys Former Presley HQ
Having acquired the Presley Cos. and its assets, William Lyon Homes has sold that company’s corporate headquarters building at 19 Corporate Plaza in Newport Beach to PLC Land Co. Terms were not disclosed.
William Lyon Homes, and now the old employees from the Presley Cos., are housed at a building at the corner of Birch Street and Von Karman Avenue. PLC Land Co., homebuilder and developer Christopher C. Gibbs’ firm that is developing the Huntington Seacliff residential development in Huntington Beach, will move into the two-story, 15,000-square-foot office building in June.
Other tenants will include PLC Christopher Homes, the homebuilding entity, as well as PLC Commercial, which is headed by former PM Realty and Irvine Co. executive Michael T. Lutton and is developing a series of suburban entertainment centers. Doug Killian of Voit Commercial represented PLC Land.
Alcone Takes Spectrum Space
Alcone Marketing Group, a sales-promotion and marketing-services firm, has purchased a 92,000-square-foot building in the Irvine Spectrum to house its corporate headquarters, now in Irvine also.
The company,with offices in Irvine; Darien, Conn.; London and Hong Kong,was attracted by the facility’s indoor-outdoor eating areas, a conference wing, a reference library and a video teleconferencing center. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. John Matus and Christine Bowen of Lee & Associates represented Alcone Marketing Group.
RESIDENTIAL
A local residential source says one of the problems with the ongoing effort to sell Catellus Residential Group’s homebuilding arm is that while there may be an interest in buying their assets, very few local homebuilders will be interested in also taking on Catellus Residential’s staff.
In the mid-1990s, when the current consolidation binge began, many national public homebuilders were looking to enter the Southern California marketplace and were willing to take on a company’s staff, seeing it as the beginning of an operational infrastructure. But today, many of these same national builders already have a presence and their own staff in Southern California, the source said.
This source, the head of a public homebuilder with operations in Orange County, said most companies are very hungry for land assets, but it will be more difficult to find one willing to take on Catellus Residential’s whole organization.
“We’d love to buy the land supply, but you don’t want to buy the organization,” said the source. “We don’t need it. (To acquire the staff means) you’re going to be paying a premium and we already have an organization (here).”
Construction Starts in Bolsa Chica
Well, it’s official: Construction of homes in Bolsa Chica has started. Of course, it’s not quite what Mike Rafferty and the folks at Hearthside Homes have been hoping for.
Rafferty, who heads up the Irvine-based homebuilder, said his company has begun construction of 16 high-end homes on a sliver of the Bolsa Chica Mesa.
“For the first time in the history of Bolsa Chica, we’re building on the mesa,” Rafferty said.
Hearthside Homes has been in a long-running battle with environmentalists and various state and county agencies, trying to get the necessary entitlements to build roughly 1,300 homes there.
Most of the Bolsa Chica area where Hearthside Homes hopes to build is in unincorporated Orange County, but the sliver of land where construction was recently launched is within the city of Huntington Beach boundaries. Hearthside Homes officials were able to secure the necessary approvals from the city to launch construction on the 16 homes.
Sandover, as the project is called, will be priced from the $800,000 range. Sales of the 3,400- to 3,800-square-foot homes will begin next month, with the first deliveries scheduled for November.
