Irvine, San Clemente Lead County in Residential Permits Pulled
COMMERCIAL
Internet retailer buy.com Inc. recently leased an office-warehouse facility in the heart of The Irvine Spectrum and began operating a return center in the building last week.
“The facility (handles) customer returns and damaged merchandise,” said broker Jeff Carr of CB Richard Ellis, who, along with Gregg Haly, represented the landlords, William and LuAnne Leonard. Max Wang of Voit Commercial Brokerage represented buy.com in the three-year, half-million-dollar lease agreement.
Buy.com, an online seller of computer hardware, software, CDs and DVDs, began searching for a larger facility before its lease ended at a 6,000-square-foot return center in Santa Ana. The company found what it needed in the tech-heavy address of 6 Chrysler in Irvine. The 25,000-square-foot building also has office space that buy.com will use for employee overflow, according to Pete Lauderdale, a facilities manager at the company. The return facility opened with a staff of 15 permanent and 40 temporary employees.
In addition to moving into the larger warehouse, buy.com continues to seek a tenant to sublease its 53,000-square-foot, four-story headquarters at The Summit Office Campus in Aliso Viejo, according to real estate sources.
The company reportedly wants to move to a 100,000-square-foot, one-story building in South Orange County. Though specific sites have not been released, Buy.com officials indicated they have located a number of sites that fit their specifications. The company wants a facility with amenities for its high-tech workforce, including a custom-designed building and a much larger parking area than the Aliso Viejo office can supply. That move, however, hinges on buy.com’s ability to sublease its current headquarters.
Bits and Pieces:
Continental Development Corp. has selected Irvine-based Snyder Langston to provide pre-construction and construction services for a planned 25,000-square-foot office building in Hawthorne. The two-story building is scheduled to break ground next month. It is designed by Nadel Architects and will feature a contemporary theme … Irvine-based R.D. Olson Construction has been tapped to begin construction of the second phase of Marriott Vacation Club International’s project in Newport Beach. R.D. Olson recently completed construction of the first phase of the Newport Coast Villas complex, which consisted of 59 villas, retail outlets, sales offices and a health club. The $18 million second phase will include a four-story and five three-story buildings totaling 135,000 square feet, which will house 79 villas … Newport Beach-based CT Realty Corp. has paid $13.5 million to Voit Cal Portfolio Partners Phase I LLC for the 169,808-square-foot Vallecitos Business Center in San Marcos. The project, eight two-story buildings on 11 acres, is 98% occupied. CT Realty and Voit Cal Portfolio Partners both were represented by Randy LaChance and Chris Loughridge from the San Diego office of Voit Commercial Brokerage and by Louis Tomaselli of the Voit Commercial’s Anaheim office.
RESIDENTIAL
Not surprisingly, Irvine is the busiest city in terms of residential building activity so far this year, with developers having pulled permits for a total of 3,866 units in that city, according to the latest Construction Industry Research Board figures available.
Second on the list is unincorporated Orange County with 2,708 units. (Most of that construction activity is happening in Ladera Ranch in the interior of South Orange County.) San Clemente, home to the Talega masterplanned community, is third on the list with permits for a total of 784 units pulled through the first 10 months of this year.
On the other end of the scale, hammers are at a standstill in the communities of Lake Forest and Los Alamitos, where no building permits have been taken out so far this year. Builders aren’t necessarily lining up in front of the planning departments in the communities of Stanton and Fountain Valley, either, where so far one and two permits have been pulled, respectively.
Dan Williams contributed to this column.
