Blizzard Entertainment Inc. has signed a new lease for its offices in the Irvine Spectrum in a deal that should keep Orange County’s largest software company in its present location for the foreseeable future.
The company, whose World of Warcraft series has made it the world’s largest online game maker, recently signed a lease renewal for its three-building headquarters at the Alton Corporate Center at Alton Parkway and Laguna Canyon Road.
The unit of Santa Monica-based parent Activision, which is part of Vivendi SA in Paris, also signed a new deal for space it occupies in multiple buildings at the Irvine Oaks office campus, a 16-building property across the street from its main headquarters.
The leases total about 435,000 square feet, according to marketing material from the Irvine office of Lee & Associates, whose brokers represented Blizzard in the deals.
That’s the largest office lease reported in Orange County this year.
Officials with Newport Beach-based Olen Properties Corp., which owns Irvine Oaks, said its lease with Blizzard—totaling close to 200,000 square feet—is valued at $37 million and runs about 10 years.
Newport Beach-based Irvine Company, which owns the 235,000-square-foot Alton Corporate Center that’s fully leased to Blizzard, confirmed the size of the new deal at its property but declined to discuss other terms of the lease.
Blizzard officials could not be reached for comment.
The gaming company has been at the iron-gated Alton Corporate Center—the former home of chipmaker Broadcom Corp.—since 2007.
The distinctive property holds a Blizzard library, museum, cafeteria and a giant statue of an orc—a fictional character from one of its games.
The company began expanding into space across the street at Irvine Oaks in 2010.
The lease renewal there will result in the campus getting a new four-story parking structure on the site to accommodate Blizzard and other tenants, according to Igor Olenicoff, Olen’s president and owner.
Olen bought Irvine Oaks in 2013 for a reported $73.5 million in its largest Orange County purchase in several years.
The 322,000-square-foot, low-rise campus is now full, and Blizzard is its largest tenant, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
“We anticipate that additional medical uses could qualify to go into our project in the future with this additional parking,” Olenicoff said last week.
Olen Vice President Natalia Ostensen, Olenicoff’s daughter, headed up negotiations for the landlord in its lease with Blizzard.
No Tower Plans
Blizzard last renewed the lease for its Irvine offices in 2012 in a deal reported at the time to be for about seven years.
The company, one of OC’s largest office tenants, has often been mentioned over the years as a potential candidate to move to new facilities elsewhere in the county.
In recent months, real estate sources and Santa Ana civic officials told the Business Journal that the company was taking a hard look at becoming an anchor tenant at developer Mike Harrah’s long-proposed One Broadway tower.
Those negotiations were never confirmed by Blizzard or its representatives.
The 37-story tower planned for downtown Santa Ana would be OC’s tallest building, but Harrah’s Caribou Industries has yet to announce a major tenant that could allow it to break ground on the project.
Olenicoff believes the latest lease renewals eliminates the prospect of Blizzard moving to One Broadway.
