Parker Properties Adding 310,000 Square Feet on Spec
Parker Properties has launched speculative construction of the latest two buildings at its Summit Office Campus in Aliso Viejo, introducing the first five-story buildings to the development and making available for lease roughly 310,000 square feet.
The latest construction comes on the heels of a major lease to eDevelopments.com now known as Enfrastructure, which took 114,000 square feet, and the sale of three buildings totaling 165,000 square feet to QLogic Corp.
All this activity has reduced occupancy at the office park along the San Joaquin Hills (73) Toll Road to roughly 14%. Asking rents for the new buildings will be roughly $2.50 per square foot.
The latest phase of construction is being undertaken by Cigna/Parker LLC, a joint venture of Cigna Corporation and Aliso Viejo-based Parker Properties, which has separate relationships with financial partners for funding of different phases of construction at the Summit development.
The new buildings won’t be completed until June 2001 and will feature large floorplates, a double-level lobby and elaborate landscaping, said Russ Parker, a principal with Parker Properties.
The Summit is entitled for buildings up to nine stories, but Parker anticipates going no higher than seven stories, in keeping with the overall campus atmosphere of the development.
“Big tenants like mid-rise more than they do high-rise,” he said.
Addressing one of the biggest criticisms of new South Orange County office developments, Parker Property officials have spent considerable time designing and incorporating “people-friendly” places.
“We’ve put in time and effort and planning, and we have very usable indoor and outdoor places where people can meet,” said Parker, adding that these designs have been in the planning stages for years and are not a response to recent criticism.
Along these lines, future plans call for a sports club, a day-care facility and upscale restaurants in the Summit. Additionally, the nearby Aliso Viejo Town Center boasts 15 restaurants, an Edwards 21-plex and various retail outlets, all providing an opportunity for employees to get away occasionally, Parker said.
In addition to construction of the two 155,000-square-foot buildings, Parker Properties is putting the finishing design touches on three 90,000-square-foot buildings. This complex, the Summit West Campus, is being designed as a “mini-campus” and will be targeted at big users, Parker said. Those buildings will lease for $2.55 to $2.65 per square foot, he added.
“We’ve gotten a lot of interest there,” said Parker, adding that one of the attractive features is that the buildings can be connected.
While company officials are applying the final touches to those plans, no construction will be launched until a tenant occupying 40% or more of the planned 180,000 square feet commits, Parker said.
The entire Summit development is planned for 1.7 million square feet.
Increasingly, the Summit has become one of the premier tech office parks in South County.
With the presence of such names as Buy.com and QLogic and others, tech firms now occupy roughly 50% of the existing 665,000 square feet, up from about 30% a year ago, Parker said.
And while he acknowledged concern about the recent wild fluctuations in the fortunes of tech stocks on Wall Street, Parker nonetheless said he felt comfortable with his company’s strict credit and deposit requirements.
“You can’t have this crazy unpredictable growth (in tech stock valuations) without having a pretty crazy landing,” he said. “I think there is a certain amount of risk.”
Separately, Parker Properties has launched what it is touting as a state-of-the-art Web site designed to familiarize brokers and tenants with the company’s projects and future plans.
“I think we have a pretty cutting-edge Web site,” Parker said. “We crammed it with a lot of broker-usable and user-usable information so they can make prints of floorplates.”
Using the floorplates, prospective tenants will be able to envision various scenarios and draft a configuration that suits their needs. n
