A Pasadena-based real estate investor with financial backing from China has proposed building a pair of creative offices along Barranca Parkway in Irvine, across the street from the Tustin Legacy development.
Gemdale USA Corp. recently filed early-stage plans with the city for the project, which would go up on a 5-acre site it bought in 2017, near the intersection of Barranca Parkway and Von Karman Avenue.
The site currently holds a nearly 70,000-square-foot office building, which Gemdale calls R3 @ Irvine.
Gemdale bought the single-story building for $16.9 million, or nearly $243 square foot.
The building is mostly vacant, according to market tracker CoStar Group Inc., and the 45-year-old office would be demolished to make way for the new office campus, situated less than a mile from the new Flight creative office project in Tustin on the city’s former Marine base.
According to a preliminary proposal, the development would include a five-story office building totaling 114,070 square feet and a six-story office building totaling 158,075 square feet. It would also have an event lawn and amenities such as a gym and campus-serving retail.
An on-site seven-story parking structure would have nearly 1,050 spaces.
Sources familiar with the plans say Gemdale would likely build the offices on a speculative basis once it gets city approvals, and that the offices would likely be geared toward two or three large tenants.
Only Local Asset
The early-stage plans have yet to make their way through the city’s planning process.
The site is the only known OC asset for the developer, whose other investment include properties in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, New York, and Boston.
The company’s parent is Gemdale Corp., which the company describes as “one of China’s largest and leading real estate developers.”
It was founded in 1988 and is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange with a market value of about $8.4 billion.
Gemdale officials could not be reached for comment.
Flight Adjacent
The project would be about half the size of Trammell Crow Co.’s 545,000-square-foot The Boardwalk development along Jamboree Road in Irvine; the city’s last big speculative office project.
The two-building, nine-story complex opened about 20 months ago; it is the largest new office development in the airport area of Irvine in about a decade. It’s currently about 80% leased, according to CoStar records.
Developers at Tustin’s Flight, a multibuilding creative office project now leasing up nearby, has ties to Gemdale.
Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co., which unveiled the first phase of Flight in March, has worked with Gemdale in other deals outside of Orange County, but is not part of the Irvine development.
Lincoln, which operates locally out of Costa Mesa, was involved with Gemdale’s entry in the United States market.
In 2014, the duo formed a joint venture to develop two office properties in San Francisco’s Financial District.
It was the first deal for Gemdale in the U.S. following a $350 million bond offering in 2012.
Along with Flight and the R3 @ Irvine site, the same stretch on Barranca has seen other developments move ahead, including a 208-room hotel now under construction and a 370-unit senior housing complex that got the go-ahead last year. Both of those projects are on the Irvine side of the street.
Asian Funds
Gemdale isn’t the only commercial developer backed in part by Asian funds that’s looking to build locally.
Irvine’s Great Far East, which has ties to China, has approvals for a 15-story hotel and office tower along MacArthur Boulevard across the street from John Wayne Airport.
A mile away along Jamboree Road, a combination hotel, office, and medical office project has been proposed that would run about 700,000 square feet. The Banc Hotel project is backed in part by Hong Kong’s HJ Capital.
In Anaheim, the largest proposed mixed-use development in the Platinum Triangle, LT Platinum Center, is approved but has yet to move ahead. It’s a development of China’s LT Global.
