In a coup for Parker Properties and a quick recovery by eDevelop-ments.com, the technology start-up last week signed a five-year lease for 114,000 square feet with an option for an additional 320,000 square feet in The Summit Office Campus in Aliso Viejo.
The deal, whose value officials declined to disclose, is initially smaller than a planned 200,000-square-foot technology complex eDevelop-ments.com had been planning to take from Parker Hannifin Corp. at the coveted 40-acre Park Aerospace parcel in Irvine. But additional space at the Summit is expected to be ready for occupancy early next year, a key requirement for eDevelopments.com officials.
Buy.com founder Scott Blum, and eDevelopments.com officials declined to comment.
For Parker Properties, the deal represents yet another high-tech client that has chosen the company’s Summit project to call home. Blum’s Buy.com is already a tenant there, occupying 55,120 square feet. Buy.com is expected to occupy another 27,000 square feet in the next few weeks. eDevelopments.com is scheduled to occupy their space in October.
“When you have one or two companies of significance that move there, it becomes a spot where other companies want to be,” said Lee Redmond, a principal with Parker Properties.
While Parker Properties officials were eager to do the deal, Redmond said the firm held eDevelopments.com to a higher standard when evaluating their financial ability to complete the lease, something many landlords are doing as tech company fortunes have sagged. With a downturn in technology stocks, some local observers wondered whether the incubator model,where startups share resources at the same site,was dead.
“We clearly needed to understand what their sources of capital were and how they intended to spend that money,” Redmond said. “Based on all of our investigations, we’re very comfortable with it.”
The new lease represents a smaller initial commitment by eDevelopments.com, but the firm is expected to eventually occupy the rest of the space it will need sooner than it would have at the Parker Aerospace site. A source familiar with eDevelopments.com’s plans said the main reason the firm’s lease for space at the Parker Aerospace site fell through was the inability of Parker Hannifin to deliver the required space soon enough.
The source said eDevelopments.com officials were attracted to the campus-style setting and networked buildings offered at The Summit. Launched in January 1997, the business park has 700,000 square feet of a planned 1.7 million square feet. In addition to Buy.com, tenants include Fluor Corp., software firm Datalink and pharmaceutical company Kyowa Hakko.
“It’s an incredible project,” the source said. “It’s one of the most technologically advanced office parks I’ve ever seen.”
The option to eventually occupy up to an additional 320,000 square feet was a key component for eDevelopments.com officials, the source said. Planned future construction at The Summit will be able to accommodate that growth.
“It’s got three or four subsequent phases of development, which is to say there’s pretty unlimited growth potential,” the source said.
For Parker Properties’ Redmond, the option to take up additional space is a welcome harbinger of additional business not only from eDevelopments.com, but also from some of the firms that may be nurtured there.
“As they grow new companies, we would hope to have the opportunity to provide space for those companies that may need to create their own separate identity at some point,” Redmond said.
EDevelopments.com officials have been reticent to discuss exactly what their plans are for the company and even what it will do. While it has been widely described as an incubator for Internet start-ups, a source familiar with the firm’s thinking said, “It’s not an incubator. It’s an infrastructure company, an ASP (application service provider) and a venture capital company all rolled into one.”
While Aliso Viejo will serve as the first site, eDevelopments.com officials are looking at roughly a dozen markets across the U.S. from which to launch other operations.
Ted Snell, Carol Trapani, Bill Welch and John Desper of CB Richard Ellis represented Parker Properties in the negotiations, while eDevelopments.com officials represented themselves.
