LBA Realty is in line to buy a big office complex in Phoenix, making the Irvine-based investor the latest Orange County real estate company making waves in that region.
The privately held investor is said to be nearing a deal to buy a four-building office portfolio at the Camelback Esplanade mixed-use campus in northeast Phoenix.
The buildings are a mix of 10- and 11-story offices that total about 966,000 square feet, according to a report from Business Real Estate Weekly of Arizona, a trade publication that first reported the impending deal.
The four offices, which are about two-thirds occupied, will trade hands for about $275 million, or roughly $285 per square foot, according to the trade publication.
Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. is selling the buildings in a deal expected to close next month. MetLife paid about $318 million for the offices in 2005.
LBA already owns more than 2 million square feet of offices in and around the Phoenix and Scottsdale areas in a mix of low-rise campus buildings and high-rises. It also has a substantial industrial portfolio in the area.
The likely purchase of the Camelback Esplanade buildings adds to a string of deals in the Phoenix area involving OC-based companies this month.
In early November, Aliso Viejo-based homebuilder New Home Co. said it entered into a deal to buy its first development project in the state, a 68-home site in suburb Paradise Valley near Camelback Mountain.
Plans call for the upscale project to hold a mix of detached homes and condos with average selling prices in the $2 million range. The land is being sold by Irvine-based Crown Realty & Development Corp., which is redeveloping the area—previously the site of a now-closed resort—into a mix of homes, a boutique hotel and a golf course.
Also this month, Newport Beach-based Olen Properties Corp. made its largest reported acquisition in nearly a decade for a newly built apartment complex in Scottsdale. It paid $88 million to buy a 388-unit complex called The Jefferson at One Scottsdale.
The property, which is being rebranded One North Scottsdale by Olen, sold for about $227,000 a unit. It opened a year ago and is Olen’s third apartment acquisition in the area this year; the other two deals totaled about $69 million.
Hotel Sale
The Radisson Suites Buena Park, a 200-room hotel a short walk from Knott’s Berry Farm, was sold to a local investor.
A Fountain Valley-based investor listed in property records as Golden Capital Venture LLC paid a reported $23.4 million, or about $117,000 a room for the hotel, according to CoStar records.
The buyer got a nearly $17.6 million loan from Bank of America to finance the purchase, according to loan records.
Golden Capital will operate the hotel as the Radisson Suites Anaheim-Buena Park and plans to “introduce improvements that will enhance the level of service and comfort delivered to business and leisure travelers,” according to a statement from the Newport Beach office of CBRE Hotels, whose Bob Kaplan and Rod Apodaca worked on the deal.
CBRE’s brokers represented the seller, Khanna Enterprises Ltd., a Buena Park-based entity that paid a reported $18.6 million for the hotel in 2013, according to CoStar data. Daniel Shaunt of Irvine-based Reeco represented the buyer.
The four-story property is at 7762 Beach Blvd. and was built in the early 1980s.
