RESIDENTIAL
Irvine homebuilder Standard Pacific Corp. is consolidating more of its operations in California, its largest market.
The company said it is merging its Northern California and Southern California regions, which are expected to remain based in Orange County. The head of the company’s six southern California offices currently is based in Irvine.
The move’s being done to reduce costs, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company’s Northern California operations had been based in Pleasanton. Last October, it combined two local Northern California offices into the Pleasanton office, resulting in about 25 lost jobs.
At the same time, it merged its Central Valley operations, based in Salida, into its Sacramento office.
The total number of layoffs that will result from the latest move was not disclosed, but there’s at least one big position being eliminated.
Standard Pacific said it was eliminating its Northern California regional president position, which was held by Douglas Krah, one of the company’s executive officers.
Krah had been with the company for nearly a decade and held his most recent position since late 2003. His annual compensation was about $1 million, according to SEC records.
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15300 Barranca Parkway: Vision Solutions moving HQ from airport area |
Standard Pacific, which counts a market value of about $300 million, reported sales of 438 homes in California in the first quarter, down 35% from a year earlier, with 153 of those orders being in Northern California.
Workout Consultants Thriving
The list of local consulting companies targeting owners of distressed land keeps increasing.
In the past two months, I’ve written separately about two Irvine-based companies that have started up competing consulting businesses recently. Irvine land brokerage O’Donnell/Atkins has started up an “asset solutions group” for lenders who are finding themselves managing big land holdings.
A similar business is also under way at Strategic Land Advisors, a new company whose execs include Barry Gross, president of Irvine-based Developers Research LLC, as well as Paul Grover, a former O’Donnell/Atkins exec.
Earlier this month, I got a call from Sarah Woodward, one of the managing partners of Newport Beach-based Asset Strategy Partners, alerting me that there’s a third company to keep in mind.
Asset Strategy provides services “for the resolution of problem loans or equity investments and the management of real estate owned assets for value maximization and disposition,” according to the company’s Web site.
The company includes six principals with banking, workout, land use and development expertise. Woodward previously was the regional manager of Fremont Investment & Loan’s commercial real estate division in Irvine, and was also a senior consulting manager at Kenneth Leventhal & Co., now part of Ernst & Young LLP.
Other principals include Kent Hawkins, president and cofounder of Newport Beach’s Statewide Acquisition Corp., an apartment and condominium investment company.
COMMERCIAL
Vision Solutions Inc., an Irvine disaster recovery and data management software company, is moving its headquarters from the John Wayne Airport area to the Irvine Spectrum.
The company leased a 34,320-square-foot office building near the Lakeview Business Center in Irvine for its corporate headquarters. The space, at 15300 Barranca Parkway, had been used by Option One Mortgage Corp. Vision Solutions is moving in October.
Terms of the lease weren’t disclosed. Other buildings in the area have monthly asking rates running from $1.20 to $1.95 per square foot, according to the Web site for the property’s landlord, The Irvine Company.
Vision Solutions, whose products run on servers developed by IBM, ranks as the No. 10 OC software maker based on revenue, according to the Business Journal’s June ranking of software makers here.
Vision Solutions jumped seven spots on the list, with 85% year-over-year growth, to $98 million in revenue last year. A year ago, Vision Solutions bought its biggest competitor, Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.-based Lakeview Technology Inc.
Jack McNutt and Chon Kantikovit of Grubb & Ellis Co.’s Newport Beach office represented Vision Solutions in the lease. Gary Gerson and Rick Wandrocke of the Irvine Co. represented their company.
