There’s one less industrial building on Red Hill Avenue in Irvine.
Construction crews recently put fences up around 17111 Red Hill Ave., a roughly 7.6-acre site at the intersection with Alton Parkway that previously held the headquarters of Irvine-based Royalty Carpet Inc. A 205,413-square-foot industrial building at the site was knocked down over the past month.
It’s the first step in a planned expansion of Edwards Lifesciences Corp., whose 26-acre campus is next door.
I reported in August on Edwards filing plans with the city to build two office and laboratory buildings, an employee amenities facility, and a parking structure on the site, which it bought in June for $36 million.
The new buildings would total about 471,450 square feet and be built in three phases over several years, city records indicate.
Edwards’ existing campus on 1 Edwards Way totals 660,475 square feet and houses several thousand workers.
The company makes products for treating structural heart disease, specializing in artificial heart valves and critical-care and surgical monitoring devices.
Edwards employs about 4,350 in Orange County, including at a few locations off-campus, according to Business Journal data. It’s OC’s 15th-largest employer and its most valuable public company, with a value of nearly $35 billion. Its shares rose sharply in the past week as rumors of a potential sale were reported on (see story, page 1).
The former Royalty Carpet site isn’t the only industrial property on Red Hill that could be seeing change after its longtime owners sold the space.
Last month, I reported on a separate 15-acre site a few miles up the street in Santa Ana that had been owned by Ricoh Electronics Inc., a Tustin-based maker of digital copiers, printed circuit boards, scanners, printers and other products.
The property currently holds about 210,000 square feet of industrial buildings, according to CoStar Group Inc. records. It sits across the street from the northwestern edge of the Tustin Legacy development and is being eyed for a variety of uses by its new owners, an entity affiliated with Newport Beach developers CT Realty Investors and Arrimus Capital. They paid about $43.5 million for it.
New industrial buildings are potential options for development, as is multifamily construction, real estate sources tell the Business Journal.
Lake Forest Living
Irvine-based apartment developer and investor Western National Group has bought a 131-unit rental complex in Lake Forest.
An affiliate of the company recently took ownership of Bellecour Way Apartment Homes, a 15-year-old property just off Lake Forest Drive about a mile south of the Foothill Transportation Corridor (241) toll road.
The company paid about $56.2 million for the complex, according to property records. That works out to a little more than $429,000 per unit.
Western National took out a 10-year, $26 million loan with Bethesda, Md.-based Berkeley Point Capital LLC to fund the deal, property records show.
The complex was sold by an affiliate of AEW Capital Management, according to those records.
The townhome-style complex totals about 143,183 square feet and has a mixture of two-bedroom and three-bedroom units.
Creative Listing
Bespoke Irvine, a recently renovated creative-office project in the Spectrum area, has hit the market for sale at an asking price of $13.8 million.
The renovation of the building at 3 Burroughs was headed by Long Beach-based developer Harbor Associates LLC, which has found success buying and upgrading a number of older properties, particularly in Tustin and Irvine.
Harbor put $1.8 million into renovating the building, including demolition of part of the second floor, to make way for an expanded two-story lobby.
The building’s also available for lease at a monthly rent of $2.39 per square foot, according to CBRE Group Inc.’s Newport Beach-based investment properties team, which has the listing.
