Raytheon Co. is expanding its local operations with a Brea lease that is among the largest seen this year.
The company leased 78,000 square feet of office space at 120 S. State College Blvd., where it is taking up a three-story building, according to real estate sources familiar with the deal.
The building, near the Orange (57) Freeway, is one of six in Brea owned by Los Angeles-based Maguire Properties Inc.
The lease appears to be a big expansion for Raytheon and could help boost its local presence by nearly 50% once the office is fully occupied. The building’s designed to hold about 300 people.
Raytheon now has about 750 employees in Orange County, primarily in neighboring Fullerton. The Waltham, Mass.-based company is the 10th largest aerospace and defense contractor operating in the county, according to the Business Journal’s 2007 list.
Raytheon also has operations in Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Irvine and El Segundo. The company is keeping its main local operations in Fullerton, according to brokers. Raytheon has had operations in Fullerton since acquiring Hughes Aircraft Co. in 1997.
Raytheon is set to continue operating out of roughly 400,000 square feet of space in Fullerton, said Jeff Sharpe, a broker for the Irvine office of Cushman & Wakefield Inc. who represented Raytheon in the Brea lease.
The company develops radar systems and does air traffic control work in Fullerton as part of a venture with France’s Thales.
Raytheon, which also makes missiles and satellites, isn’t saying what type of operations it plans to move to Brea. The company is set to move near the end of summer.
The Brea deal is one of the largest expansion-related office leases signed in the county this year amid the shaky economy.
The State College office is part of Maguire’s six-office Brea Campus, which totals about 535,000 square feet of space.
Much of the Brea space has been empty after Los Angeles-based mutual fund manager Capital Group Cos. moved much of its local operations from Brea to a new 615,000-square-foot campus in the Irvine Spectrum.
For more on this story, see the June 9 edition of the Business Journal.
