Newport Beach’s 1500 Quail Street, a seven-story office about a mile from the entrance to John Wayne Airport, has a new owner.
A venture between Lincoln Property Co. and an undisclosed institutional adviser recently acquired the 90,715-square-foot property a block north of Bristol Street and the Corona del Mar Freeway.
It sold for $32.1 million, or about $354 per square foot, by New York Life in a deal brokered by Paul Jones, Kevin Shannon, Blake Bokosky, Brunson Howard, Rick Stumm and Brandon White with Newmark Knight Frank’s capital markets team.
The building is one of just nine Class A office towers in the city not owned by dominant area landlord Irvine Co. in Newport Beach, according to area brokerage data.
It’s the fourth of the nine buildings to have sold since early last year; the four traded hands for nearly $350 million combined.
The others that changed hands in Newport Beach during the period include 4400 MacArthur Blvd., the two-building 4000 MacArthur complex, and Newport Corporate Tower on Dove Street.
“Class A office assets in this market are extremely rare and we received a number of quality offers from a variety of high net worth and institutional investors,” said Newmark’s Jones in a statement.
“The seller has owned 1500 Quail for nearly two decades and recently invested approximately $2 million in capital improvements, making this asset even more attractive to buyers seeking ownership opportunities in Newport Beach,” said Jones, who works in the brokerage’s Newport Beach office.
The 1500 Quail building, built in 1983, is on nearly five acres and 91% leased to 17 tenants, including Northwestern Mutual, Ticor Title, Alera Group and BB&T.
The sale is another addition to the Orange County portfolio of the local office of Dallas-based Lincoln Property, a real estate investor and developer that’s recently been active on acquisition and development fronts in OC.
In November it joined in a venture with New York-based upstart online real estate firm Cadre to buy the 14-story Orange Center Tower in Anaheim’s Platinum Triangle area for a reported $93.5 million, one of Central OC’s largest recent office deals.
Lincoln is also moving fast on the first development phase at Tustin Legacy’s first big office project, the multibuilding creative-office site Flight.
Fullerton Flip
Alexan Aspect, a recently-built apartment complex in Fullerton, traded hands for $131 million.
The 323-unit property, which opened last year, was bought by a fund managed by JPMorgan Chase & Co., CoStar Group Inc. records show.
It’s the second-biggest apartment sale in Orange County so far this year. The top deal was the $134 million sale of Surf at 39 in January, a 400-unit Huntington Beach complex. It sold for $335,000 per unit compared to Alexan’s nearly $406,000 per unit sale.
The four-story complex was built by an affiliate of Dallas-based Trammell Crow Residential. It features units averaging 927 square feet, and monthly rents for one-bedroom units start at about $2,000.
Alexan is about a block north of the Riverside (91) Freeway between Harbor Boulevard and Lemon Street.
Stream Shakeup
Dallas-based commercial brokerage Stream Realty Partners tapped a well-known local name to head area operations.
It recently hired Martin Pupil as executive managing director of its Orange County, Inland Empire and Los Angeles markets. Stream said it handles leasing and management services for about 160 million square feet in the markets.
Pupil joins from Colliers International’s Irvine office, where he oversaw the brokerage’s Western U.S. operations, and more recently served as the national president of brokerage services.
He’ll be based in Stream’s Irvine office and responsible for leading real estate service offerings, including leasing, development, investment sales, portfolio analysis and property management.
