Opus West Corp. is set to break ground on a 13-story high-rise office building in Irvine, the company said Monday.
It’s the latest in a growing crop of high-rise office tower development in the area.
The Irvine office of Phoenix-based Opus West is set to start work on Opus Center Irvine III, a 313,000-square-foot building at Main Street and MacArthur Boulevard, near the John Wayne Airport.
Construction on the tower is expected to start in July. Completion is estimated for September 2007.
The tower will be the third and final building developed by Opus West as part of its Opus Center Irvine plan.
Opus Center Irvine I, a 268,000-square-foot, 12-story high-rise building, is 99% occupied. It was sold to Prudential in 2001 for about $70 million.
Opus Center II, a 14-story, 307,559-square-foot high-rise office building, is 95% occupied. That building was sold in late 2004 to law firm Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear LLP for more than $100 million.
Orange County’s strong absorption, decreasing vacancy rates and a lack of large blocks of contiguous class A office space spurred development of the tower, said Matt Montgomery, Opus West director of real estate development.
CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. said the vacancy rate for the greater John Wayne Airport area was 5.8% at the end of the first quarter. There was about 2.3 million square feet of net absorption in 2005 in the area.
Opus West’s project comes as developers have begun breaking ground again on office projects.
The Irvine Co. has three projects in the works. Its two-building, 20-40 Pacifica project that just broke ground near the Irvine Spectrum totals about 630,000 square feet. Closer to the airport is a 10-story, 231,178-square-foot project at Irvine Towers.
