Tower 17, one of Irvine’s more distinctive high-rises, got a new owner earlier this year. Now it has a new name.
Muller Co. of Laguna Hills, which bought the building, is re-branding the circular, 17-story office near John Wayne Airport as Skyward Tower.
The company was originally considering calling it Skyline Tower, but didn’t want to confuse the office with Skyline at MacArthur, the two condominium towers Santa Ana-based developer Nexus Cos. is building in its hometown.
The name change is part of the latest makeover for the 20-year-old, 238,000-square-foot building, which sits on Von Karman Avenue across the street from Bistango Restaurant.
Along with the new name, the owners are also upgrading the building’s common area, lobby and courtyard, said Grubb & Ellis Co.’s Greg May, who along with Oliver Fleener are the listing brokers for the 85% full tower.
Muller and Rockwood Capital LLC of Greenwich, Conn., paid $310 million for the tower, and two other buildings in Santa Ana and Orange, in May. Maguire Properties Inc. sold the buildings, which were formerly owned by Equity Office Properties Trust.
Last year, Equity Office put in another $850,000 in refurbishments to Skyward Towers, including landscaping work, parking structure upgrades and a new awning.
Despite its unique design and recent upgrades, Skyward Tower has sometimes been a tough building to market. The building has smaller floors (running about 13,800 square feet) than other towers in the area. As a result it draws smaller tenants looking to lease an entire floor.
Those concerns reportedly kept some big investors from buying the tower from Maguire.
Average monthly rents at the building run about $2.95 per square foot.
Muller also has been re-branding the other two buildings it bought with Rockwood from Maguire.
Ameriquest Mortgage Co.’s 384,000-square-foot headquarters in Orange, at 1100 Town & Country Road, now is being called Orange Executive Tower. And the 10-story, 217,000-square-foot office that houses a division of Safeco Corp. in Santa Ana now is being called Main Street Town Center. It was formerly known as Lincoln Town Center.
Renovated Building Finds Tenant
Crossroads Anaheim, the recently renovated, 276,825-square-foot manufacturing and distribution complex at 1650 N. Kraemer Blvd., just landed its first big tenant.
Pods of Los Angeles LLC, the portable storage company, signed a six-year lease for 122,600 square feet at the building.
It’ll use the distribution space as its main Orange County storage center facility, after moving from a 32,000-square-foot site in Fullerton. It’ll also be moving some of its Los Angeles inventory to the building.
The deal, which began in October, was valued at about $6 million. At a monthly rental rate of 65 cents, it’s a new market high for that type of property in north Anaheim, said Voit Commercial Brokerage LP’s Louis Tomaselli.
Tomaselli and Voit’s Mitch Zehner represented BPG Properties Ltd., the building’s owner, in the lease. BPG bought the vacant property late last year for $29 million and renovated it.
Ian Britton and Bill Obregon of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. represented Pods of Los Angeles. The company’s Fullerton facility is in turn being subleased to Logistics Edge of Orange.
Another Net Development
Costa Mesa’s Net Development Co. has been a busy builder as of late.
In last week’s column, I wrote about the developer’s work on MacArthur Medical Campus, a 68,274-square-foot complex being built in Irvine. Net Development paid $17 million for the property, and should finish the for-sale project early next year.
The company has another for-sale project under construction, the Fairview Corporate Center, in Costa Mesa. It’s a few miles away from the company’s other development.
The Fairview Corporate site, on Fairview Street and Segerstrom Avenue, had been used by Irvine’s Microsemi Corp. for more than 20 years, prior to Net Development buying and redeveloping it this year.
The project, totaling about 80,000 square feet in two buildings, is targeting office and industrial users, rather than medical tenants. It will hold 12 offices and 12 industrial properties at 1,492 square feet to 6,264 square feet.
Prices run from the mid-$400,000s to about $1.7 million. The buildings should be ready for occupancy in spring 2008. For-sale office and industrial properties are still seeing good interest and sales as of late, especially for smaller properties, said Grubb & Ellis’ Wade Tift, who along with Byron Foss is listing the Fairview Corporate project for Net Development. Sales slowdowns are more pronounced for properties 6,000 square feet and larger, Tift said.
Clarification
Last week’s story on Central Park West in Irvine should have said that developer Lennar Corp. and partner Intergulf Development Group plan to keep taking orders for condominiums at the project’s two Astoria towers, though they aren’t heavily discounting.
Also, Lennar said it strategy for Irvine’s Great Park,which won’t see homebuilding until 2009,hasn’t changed due to the market conditions.
