The owner of a 9-acre office site next to Los Alamitos City Hall that was once intended to hold Orange County’s first 365 by Whole Foods Market has changed redevelopment plans.
City officials said this month that the 3131 Katella Ave. campus, just off the 605 Freeway, will soon be redeveloped but remain an office property.
The site is owned by the Irvine office of Lincoln Property Co., which bought it in 2014 for a reported $13 million.
Its two buildings together encompass about 150,000 square feet. The largest office property in the city, it’s about a mile west of the Los Alamitos Race Course in Cypress.
The buildings were previously occupied by SuperMedia Inc., one of the country’s largest yellow-page directory publishers, which vacated it several years ago.
Plans introduced to the city in 2016 called for Lincoln to focus on retail development there and at the adjoining City Hall property. The Village 605 project would have been anchored by a 365 by Whole Foods, a grocery store concept that offers lower prices than traditional Whole Foods stores.
But Village 605 “ran into factors beyond its control, including changes in the ‘brick and mortar’ retail market,” the city said in a statement.
Revised plans involve upgrading the existing two-story offices, which are 86,634 and 63,708 square feet, “to offer prospective office tenants a modern, efficient and progressive workspace.” It’s a multimillion-dollar project, according to the city, which is now staying put at its next-door location.
The offices “will be an important employment center for the community,” said Lincoln Property Executive Vice President Parke Miller. “Our hope is to be able to lease the project to a high-quality user base that will bring a significant number of new jobs to the city.”
Lincoln’s also the developer of Tustin’s Flight, a creative-office campus being built at Tustin Legacy.
Construction on the Los Alamitos project started this month and should be completed this summer.
Brokerage Digs
Cushman & Wakefield Inc. is going upscale with its new Irvine office.
The commercial brokerage recently moved into the top two floors of 18111 Von Karman Ave., which at 10 stories is the second-tallest building at the Lakeshore Towers campus near John Wayne Airport.
Cushman & Wakefield’s lease is for 28,415 square feet; the new space consolidates offices it had at two other airport-area buildings, and will hold its tenant representation, agency leasing, capital markets, project and development services, property management, and facilities management groups.
The space currently accommodates 100 employees but has room for more, Cushman said.
The firm ranked second among OC’s commercial brokerages in 2016 based on transaction volume, with about $3.3 billion worth of deals. Last year’s lease and sales totals haven’t been announced yet; the Business Journal’s annual listing of commercial brokerages publishes in April.
The penthouse space features “numerous unique, modern and cutting edge design features,” including “a beautiful suspended black steel staircase connecting the 9th and 10th floors,” the firm noted in a statement. It worked with architect Gensler and general contractor Howard Building Corp. on the project.
The relocation comes a few months after Cushman hired Eric Paulsen, a former executive of Irvine-based auction firm Ten-X LLC, to run its OC and Inland Empire offices.
As anyone trying to find a parking spot before eating at the Il Fornaio restaurant during the past year can attest, Lakeshore Towers has been getting a heavy amount of construction to modernize and update the multibuilding campus, which also includes a flagship 24 Hour Fitness gym.
Once completed in a few months, the work will result in 12,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, plus an additional 900 parking stalls at the campus—now known as simply Lakeshore—“that will be an additional convenience for our members,” Paulsen said.
Surf City Sale
Los Altos-based Interstate Equities Corp., which invests in California apartment properties, said a fund it runs paid $134 million for Surf at 39, a 400-unit complex in Huntington Beach.
The 46-year-old property at 16761 Viewpoint Lane previously operated as Huntington Villas; the new owners said they plan to keep the complex a “workforce housing community” with relatively affordable rents.
