Irvine-based women’s clothier St. John Knits International Inc., the county’s biggest apparel maker by workers, has sold its Irvine plant with an eye toward moving within five years.
The maker of women’s suits on Thursday said it sold and is leasing back the building at Michelson Drive and Jamboree Road.
The company makes clothes at the site and has some offices there. Most of St. John’s 2,283 local employees are there.
Developer Hines Interests LP of Houston, along with pension fund California Public Emloyees’ Retirement System, bought the building for an undisclosed price.
This lease-back deal allows for St. John to continue using the facility until 2011. After that, it remains to be seen where the company will operate.
St. John is one of the few big apparel makers to actually make clothes in Orange County.
Most others design clothes here and have them produced in Asia or Mexico.
In a statement, St. John interim Chief Executive Philip Miller suggested that jobs would remain in the area.
“We are looking for local real estate that is even more convenient for our work force, which will allow us to intelligently plan a relocation in a way that would minimize any disruption,” Miller said.
The deal “allows us to monetize the real estate, while preserving the flexibility to evaluate other local options for the plant over the next five years,” he said.
The St. John property sits in a former industrial area near John Wayne Airport that has become busy primarily with condominimum development. This has driven up land prices but antagonized some longtime companies that do business in the area.
In August, Hines bought the 120,000-square-foot building next door to the St. John headquarters, which was leased by Cisco-Linksys LLC, a unit of Cisco Systems Inc.
Rather than homes, Hines is considering an “office-dominant” redevelopment of the Cisco site, according to Douglas Holte, director of OC and San Diego operations for Hines.
Hines is also building a 12-story office tower about half a mile from the St John property, on Michelson Drive.
