A billionaire from the Inland Empire has acquired the five-building office campus in Irvine that holds the local operations of Google Inc. and others in what appears to be the largest office deal in Orange County in several years.
Property records show that an entity controlled by Jack Dangermond—the founder of digital mapping company ESRI in Redlands in San Bernardino County—recently closed on the purchase of Google Center, a multibuilding campus on Jamboree Road.
The 573,000-square-foot development sold for nearly $255 million, according to real estate sources familiar with the transaction.
That would be make it the most expensive reported office sale in Orange County in four years, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
An estimated price of nearly $445 per square foot, meanwhile, puts it among the most expensive sales of a large office complex in the area around John Wayne Airport in several years, according to the market tracker’s data.
The deal is the first known property investment in Orange County for Dangermond and his wife, Laura, who have a fortune estimated at $3.3 billion by Forbes magazine.
The Dangermonds founded their company—then known as Environmental Systems Research Institute—in 1969. The privately-held company is the market leader in the software used for creating digital maps, and reportedly has annual sales of about $1 billion.
One of ESRI’s competitors in the digital mapping sector is Google, whose Orange County operations are based in the newest building at the just-purchased Irvine campus.
That glass-sheathed, 140,000-square-foot building at 19510 Jamboree Road opened in 2014. The rest of the campus opened in phases starting in 2005.
Other notable tenants include homebuilder TRI Pointe Group Inc., investment management firm PAAMCO, and high-end health club Equinox, which has a 30,000-square-foot gym at the site.
The campus previously was known as the Impac Center, after Irvine-based Impac Mortgage Holdings Inc., which also has its headquarters at the site and was one of the first big tenants to move to the property.
The property also has been referred to as the Scholle Center. Glendale-based Dorn Platz & Co. developed the campus on land previously used by packaging company Scholle Corp.
Property records show Scholle Corp. transferred ownership of the campus about a week ago to Jacaranda Holdings LCC, an entity for which state records show an address in the city of San Bernardino.
Other entities operated by ESRI are registered under the same address. Jacaranda is a plant commonly seen in tree size in Southern California with purple blooms. Jack Dangermond’s parents owned a plant nursery, which he worked at in his youth.
The Dangermonds couldn’t be reached for comment last week.
The Irvine-based capital markets team of Cushman & Wakefield Inc., including Jeff Cole, Ed Hernandez, Rick Kaplan and John Tran, quietly listed the Google Center for sale about five months ago.
Cushman’s brokers declined to comment on the deal.
The sale of Google Center appears to set a new benchmark for pricing of offices in the airport area.
Other large high-end Irvine offices in the airport area have sold for as much $382 per square foot this year.
The Google Center’s estimated $255 million price tag is due in part to its location along the Irvine and Newport Beach city line near the intersection of Jamboree Road and MacArthur Boulevard.
The relatively new construction of the campus is also considered a plus, as is the big-name draw of Google, which occupies its stand-alone office under a long-term lease.
