Poplar Plaza, a federally owned office property on a 12.4-acre site in Los Alamitos, has been sold to a local developer and entitlement firm known for its urban infill residential work.
An affiliate of MW Investment Group of Laguna Beach about a month ago completed the purchase of the office site at 4665 Lampson Ave., property records indicate.
Poplar Plaza, near the Joint Forces Training Base, currently holds an 88,000-square-foot Department of Education building, along with excess land and a 387-space parking lot.
Auction Winner
A Ladera Ranch-based affiliate of MW Investment placed a winning bid of $26.5 million for the site in an auction sale that took place in September, with the sale closing a few months later, according to government records.
The auction started with an opening bid of $20 million. Five bidders were involved in the auction; the names of the other bidders weren’t disclosed.
When the government first disclosed plans to sell the site last year, the Business Journal cited a likely selling price in the $25 million range, assuming the land would be redeveloped into housing uses.
The $26.5 million price works out to a price of about $2.1 million an acre for the site.
The sole tenant at the two-story building is WestEd, a San Francisco-based nongovernmental educational organization that has a license to occupy the property until December 2022, according to the Department of Education.
It will remain at the site until the end of the year, and isn’t required to pay rent, according to terms of the government sale.
Infill Focus
MW Investments’ website indicates the company has worked on planning and entitlement work for projects totaling over 1,100 residential units since 2009. That portfolio totals over $500 million in combined developed value, it says.
“We specialize in finding multifamily residential, townhome, and small lot development properties that are not being used to their full potential, and repositioning these properties with a new product type,” the company’s website says. n
