Irvine’s Trade Food Hall, the city’s first new upscale dining hub built during the current market cycle, has sold for $31 million to a new Orange County investor.
Daiwa House Group, a Japan-based firm that typically specializes in residential construction, bought the 32,560-square-foot indoor-outdoor food hall, near the intersection of Michelson Drive and Von Karman Avenue, a few blocks from John Wayne Airport.
The deal is the first commercial investment in the United States for Daiwa, which has other multifamily and single-family housing projects in states such as Arizona, Illinois, and Texas.
The price it paid marks a 158% premium to the $12 million that Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. paid for the center in 2014. The sellers put an additional $7 million into revamping the site.
More notable: the roughly $950 per-square-foot price paid for Trade, which is more than double the norm for area retail buildings and among the highest prices on record for a midsized OC retail property not along Coast Highway.
Parke Miller, executive vice president at Lincoln, said Daiwa saw Trade “as a stabilized, high-quality asset that represented a great opportunity to enter the local market.”
Expansion Plans
Daiwa has previously partnered with Lincoln Property.
The duo first paired up in 2014 for rental housing projects in Texas, one of several national partnerships for the Japanese investor that first entered the U.S. market in 1976.
This marks the sixth project for the two firms.
Daiwa is looking to expand on its first commercial project with other deals in the U.S., with additional projects in Orange County a possibility.
Eclectic Hub
Lincoln Property, which operates locally from its regional office in Costa Mesa, paid about $369 per square foot for Trade in 2014, previously called Michelson Marketplace.
The nearly 30-year-old shopping center at the time was 90% occupied.
Trade is now nearly fully leased to a mix of nine local food and beverage tenants, with a variety of eclectic menus. Some started out as food trucks, like Dos Chinos, while acclaimed Chef Andrew Gruel has two concepts at Trade: Two Birds and Butterleaf.
The complex also has a central bar, aptly named Center Hub.
Lincoln Property will stay on as a property manager at Trade “to help keep things running smoothly.”
The developer has a second, similar food spot, called Mess Hall, that’s part of its Flight office development in Tustin.
