The Irvine Company has taken the wraps off 20-40 Pacifica, its entry into Orange County’s run of recently announced office tower projects.
Construction is under way on the Irvine Co.’s two 15-story buildings, which are set for the Irvine Spectrum just off the San Diego (I-405) Freeway.
Piles are driven and the foundation for the project should be done soon, said Steven Case, senior vice president of leasing for the Irvine Co.
The first building, 20 Pacifica, is expected to be finished by the end of 2007. The other, 40 Pacifica, should be done by early 2008.
The Newport Beach office of St. Louis-based construction company McCarthy Building Cos. is handling construction on the buildings, which total 630,000 square feet. The towers’ design is led by LPA Architects Inc. of Irvine.
The Irvine Co. opened a leasing office for the project in February, across the street from the construction. The rental office highlights the architecture of the towers, which will be clad in Italian travertine, pre-cast stone.
Flourishes include two-story lobbies, floor-ceiling glass and eight corner offices per floor. Sources estimate that typical development costs for a project this size are $180 million to $200 million.
Rents Still Unclear
Case wouldn’t disclose the lease rates planned for the two buildings. But he said they would be comparable to what will be charged at a couple of other high-rise projects going up in the John Wayne Airport area: Hines Interest LP’s 261,400-square-foot building at 2211 Michelson Drive and Maguire Properties Inc.’s 550,000-square-foot tower at the Park Place office complex.
Monthly rates for 20-40 Pacifica could be close to $3.50 per square foot, plus another 20 cents for parking, brokers said.
The Irvine Co. doesn’t appear to be in a rush to sign tenants, whose makeup is likely to be similar to those at other office towers in the area: financial services providers, law firms and accounting firms, among others.
Case said the Irvine Co. hopes to land a major tenant by the time the first building is complete.
Waiting to sign tenants could be an advantage. Rents have been on the rise for the past couple of years and are expected to go higher in the next two years, brokers said.
There’s close to 2 million square feet of office space under construction in the county, said Jeff Manley, chief executive of Cresa Partners LLC, a Newport Beach-based tenant representation company.
But most of that space won’t be finished for 12 to 18 months, leaving tenants with few immediate options for space, Manley said. Vacancy rates for high-end office space is less than 7%.
The Irvine Co. chose to build two towers at once because of historically-low vacancy rates, limited amount of space under development and strong projections for OC job growth, Case said.
1.5M on the Books
20-40 Pacifica is the first office tower construction for the Irvine Co. in 15 years. More is on the way.
The Irvine Co. has 1.5 million square feet of OC office projects in the works, including three office towers and two campus projects.
At 18100 Von Karman Ave. in Irvine, early work is being done on a fifth office building at the Irvine Co.’s recently acquired Irvine Towers project. The 10-story, 231,178-square-foot project is about two blocks from the Hines project.
Along the San Diego (I-5) Freeway in the Irvine Spectrum, the company is developing 414,000 square feet in eight buildings at the Discovery Business Center. The company hopes for a late 2006 completion for the two-story properties.
