The Irvine Spectrum home of Mazda North America Operations has been put on the market about three months after Orange County’s largest automaker announced plans to relocate to a new office tower down the street.
Palo Alto-based Menlo Equities recently listed for sale 7755 Irvine Center Drive, a five-story office next to the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway that’s long been Mazda’s local home.
The 126,326-square-foot property is on 8.2 acres in the heart of the Irvine Spectrum and across the street from a 15-story, full-service Marriott hotel in the early stages of construction.
An asking price hasn’t been disclosed. The Irvine office of brokerage Eastdil Secured has the listing for the property, which Mazda will vacate next year.
Mazda this January announced a deal to lease about 102,000 square feet over five floors at the 200 Spectrum Center tower, a just-completed 21-story building that’s OC’s tallest office.
The lease includes Mazda signage atop the tower. The company’s North American operations oversee the sales, marketing, parts and customer service support of Mazda vehicles in the United States and Mexico through nearly 700 dealers.
The unit of Japan-based Mazda Motor Corp. is OC’s largest automaker by employee count, with more than 500 local workers, according to Business Journal data.
The 7755 Irvine Center building should draw interest from potential owner-users and investors who can land a single tenant to take over the building once Mazda departs next year, assuming it’s not leased up before then, according to K.C. Scheipe, managing director of Eastdil’s Irvine office.
It’s one of the largest buildings in the vicinity of the Spectrum shopping center not owned by Newport Beach-based Irvine Company, the area’s dominant property owner. The property holds entitlements for additional development on the site, according to marketing materials.
“It’s a unique opportunity to own a campus within that (Spectrum) area,” Scheipe said.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Bob Thagard and John Griffin are marketing the space, according to Eastdil’s materials for the building.
The office is one of Menlo Equities’ oldest OC investments. It’s owned it since 2008, according to property records.
The investor has shed some of its other large properties in the county over the past year, including a pair of buildings in the Summit office campus in Aliso Viejo and the multibuilding Quintana campus in Irvine. It paid close to $127 million for the properties in 2010 and 2011 and sold them last year for nearly $230 million, according to brokerage data.
“They’ve done well,” Scheipe said.
Menlo still owns other buildings in the region, including several large offices in Lake Forest and Foothill Ranch.
Tesla, Too
Another notable automotive property in Orange County, a Costa Mesa service center for Tesla Motors Inc., also is up for sale.
A two-building property leased to Tesla at 3020 Pullman St. recently was listed for sale by the Newport Beach office of Hanley Investment Group.
The property, near the intersection of the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway and the 73 Toll Road, totals about 39,000 square feet and has an asking price of $17.3 million, or a 5% capitalization rate, according to marketing materials for the buildings.
Tesla moved into the facility in 2014 under a 10-year lease. The buildings are down the street from the car company’s Costa Mesa sales center.
It uses 3020 Pullman as a service station and as office and warehouse space. Its monthly rent at the property, which got a more than $5 million overhaul prior to the start of its lease, runs about $1.85 per square foot.
It last traded hands in 2012 for about $4.2 million, when it was bought by parties affiliated with former Santa Ana-based storage device maker STEC Inc., according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
Former STEC Chairman and Chief Executive Manouch Moshayedi and his family members are among OC’s largest private commercial real estate owners.
