Irvine-based Taco Bell Corp., the largest restaurant chain operator based in Orange County, has signed a deal to move its headquarters from the John Wayne Airport area to the Irvine Spectrum.
The fast food company, part of Louisville, Ky.-based Yum Brands Inc., signed a 10-year lease for about two-thirds of the space at One Premier Place, a two-building center that faces the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway near Alton Parkway.
The high-profile buildings, which total roughly 300,000 square feet, have served as the West Coast headquarters for Ford Motor Co. since their construction in 2001 at a cost of about $68 million.
Taco Bell’s lease is for 181,000 square feet, which makes it one of the largest office deals to be signed in OC in several years.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Taco Bell will be moving into the space in early 2010. The offices should hold about 600 employees, officials said.
The One Premier Place buildings are owned by Ford. During the past year, the automaker has seen a number of big changes that have drastically shrunk its local operations.
The Irvine site had been the U.S. headquarters for Ford’s Premier Automotive Group, which was made up of the automaker’s European brands.
In June, Ford sold its Jaguar and Land Rover subsidiaries, which had their U.S. headquarters in Irvine, to India’s Tata Motors Ltd. for $2.3 billion. Those companies now are relocating to the East Coast.
Ford’s Volvo subsidiary also is moving its North American headquarters from Irvine to New Jersey this year in an unrelated move. The East Coast location makes it easier for U.S. executives to stay in touch with Volvo’s global headquarters in Sweden, officials said.
In 2007, Ford sold a majority stake in Premier Automotive Group’s Aston Martin to a group of investors for $848 million.
The departures of the European brands are leaving empty much of the office complex,one of the first buildings in OC to be designated as environmentally friendly.
Ford is keeping what’s left of its local operations in 90,000 square feet at the complex. Ford officials said the company remains committed to keeping a presence in OC.
About 125 employees at Ford will remain at the site, and those departments which are remaining in Irvine are not downsizing, said John Clinard, Western regional communications manager for Ford.
One Premier Place includes an 181,000-square-foot office tower and a 90,000-square-foot product development wing.
Taco Bell is taking up the entire five-story office tower. Ford’s Western headquarters staff and design group will be housed in the product development wing, which will be reconfigured.
Maintaining the design operations and West Coast headquarters at the property “is a high priority,” said J Mays, group vice president and chief creative officer for Ford, in a statement.
“The fact that the office tower can accommodate Taco Bell is an ideal outcome,” Mays said.
The tower will be reconfigured to include office space for Taco Bell’s restaurant support center, which includes development, finance, food innovation, human resources, legal, marketing and other corporate staff. The building will also include test kitchen facilities, among other features.
Staying in OC
Taco Bell has long operated out of 17901 Von Karman Ave., a 12-story tower next to the San Diego (I-405) Freeway that bears the company’s name, as well as an adjacent building.
Consolidating the two buildings into the Ford property, which are larger floors, should allow Taco Bell to be more efficient spacewise, said Kevin Bender, a broker with the Newport Beach office of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.
The restaurant chain, which the Business Journal estimates had revenue of $1.9 billion last year, had been on the lookout for office space for more than a year.
The company never considered relocating operations outside OC, said Connie Colao, Taco Bell’s chief people officer.
CB Richard Ellis’s Bender and Mark Sprague represented Taco Bell in the lease, while Dean Chandler and Jeff Morgan, also from CB Richard Ellis, represented Ford.
