An office tower next to Angel Stadium in Anaheim has traded hands for just under $77 million, the priciest reported sale of a Central Orange County office in over three years.
CBRE Global Investors, an investment affiliate of Los Angeles-based commercial brokerage CBRE Group Inc., recently completed the buy of Stadium Towers Plaza, a 12-story, multitenant building at 2400 E. Katella Ave.
Los Angeles-based investment group CIM Group LP sold the 262,360-square-foot property for a little more than $290 per square foot, according to real estate sources familiar with the deal. It paid a reported $60 million for it in 2014.
Stadium Towers is just west of the Orange (57) Freeway and visible from most seats on the first base side of Angel Stadium when looking past the ballpark’s outfield.
BB&T Insurance Services and California United Bank each lease more than 40,000 square feet at the building, which is about 90% leased, according to market tracker CoStar Group Inc. Ticket company StubHub has an office there and its name atop the tower.
It’s CBRE Global Investors’ largest Orange County investment in two years after a fund it managed bought the 485-room Irvine Marriott Hotel at the Irvine Towers office complex near John Wayne Airport.
The hotel, which has undergone a heavy dose of reinvestment since the 2015 sale, traded for a reported $126.2 million, or $260,000 a room.
CBRE Global Investors’ last local office investment was the Tustin Centre office complex in Santa Ana, a two-building complex overlooking the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway near East 17th Street. It bought it in 2014 for a reported $65 million and sold it around the start of this year for nearly $80 million.
Paul Jones, Kevin Shannon and Blake Bokosky with Newmark Knight Frank’s local capital markets team brokered the latest Stadium Towers deal.
It’s the highest price tag for a Central OC office building in over three years, according to CoStar data, and comes during an improving outlook for the region’s 23-million-square-foot office market.
Central OC’s offices, hard hit during the last downturn, now have about a 12% vacancy rate, slightly above the 10% average in OC’s office market as a whole.
Development Site
CBRE Global Investors also bought land entitled for an office building whose planning is in early stages.
About two years ago, CIM Group filed conceptual plans with the city to build a second office next to the existing property on Katella Avenue. The project was envisioned to be as large as 300,000 square feet and reach 15 stories.
The top two floors would be designed as creative-office space—which typically includes open floor plans and other features intended to encourage collaborative work environments.
The project hasn’t moved beyond the planning stages, but CBRE Global Investors now owns the entitlements for it, sources tell the Business Journal.
The land where the office project would be has been entitled for additional office development since the mid-1980s. The existing 12-story office was built in 1989.
The last large office built in Anaheim was the 198,000-square-foot headquarters for Extron Electronics Inc. that opened in 2012.
It’s been about nine years since a large, speculative office has been built in Anaheim.
CBRE Global Investors’ purchase marks the latest sign of increased investor and developer confidence in Central Orange County’s improving office market, particularly in the area around Angel Stadium.
Central OC’s class A office market, which encompasses about 10 million square feet, had 33% vacancy rates during the depths of the last recession, when the region’s hub of mortgage companies either slashed operations or closed their doors.
Vacancy rates for those higher-end buildings are nearly 12% now, according to recent data from Voit Real Estate Services.
