The sprawling Cypress campus of Mitsubishi Motors North America Inc. has been sold to an Irvine developer, as part of the automaker’s relocation to Tennessee.
Privately held Greenlaw Partners, one of Orange County’s most active commercial real estate investors in recent years, just completed the purchase of Mitsubishi’s 22-acre site along Katella Avenue, whose collection of office space, R&D facilities and warehouses total close to 400,000 square feet.
Greenlaw paid Mitsubishi $57.5 million for the entire collection of buildings, property records indicate.
At that price it’s the largest commercial real estate deal in Cypress—OC’s 22nd largest city by population—in four years, according to data from real estate market tracker CoStar Group Inc.
The deal works out to a price of roughly $140 per square foot for the buildings, and $2.6 million per acre for the entire campus.
The most prominent building at the campus is the three-story former headquarters of Mitsubishi, an office that runs about 178,000 square feet.
The campus is about 2 miles north of the Garden Grove (22) Freeway, and a few blocks east of the Los Alamitos Race Course, which is in Cypress.
1988 Start in OC
The site held roughly 200 Mitsubishi employees as of earlier this year.
In July, the carmaker announced plans to relocate to the Nashville area to “take advantage of [its] vibrant technology skillset, all while realizing cost savings through the business-friendly work environment and proximity to sister company, Nissan.”
Nissan North America Inc. is headquartered in Franklin, Tenn., a suburb of Nashville.
The Cypress facility currently has some Mitsubishi employees, but should be vacated in the next few months. The carmaker has been based in Orange County since 1988; it has topped the 100,000 mark in cars sold each of the past two years.
All corporate departments are scheduled to relocate to Tennessee, including sales, marketing, IT, human resources, communications, parts and services, product planning, dealer operations, finance, and legal, the automaker—OC’s fifth largest by local workforce last year—said in July.
Mitsubishi’s West Coast parts distribution center, also in Cypress, is moving to Riverside, while the company’s Western region operations are expected to move to new offices elsewhere in OC, Mitsubishi said this summer.
Tenants Unknown
The buildings at the Cypress site are being bought without Greenlaw having a tenant waiting in the wings, sources tell the Business Journal.
The new owners haven’t decided whether the campus will be marketed for a single corporate user or multiple tenants, or if they’ll explore the potential of any new construction at the site.
No development plans for the campus, which counts a fair amount of excess land, have been filed with the city.
Greeenlaw’s purchase was financed through a loan made with Indianapolis-based industrial developer Duke Realty Corp. (NYSE: DRE), property records indicate.
Duke is not part of the new ownership for the site, but the firm—with a regional operations based in Irvine—could be involved at a later date.
$400M Spree
The Cypress deal adds to a busy stretch of acquisitions for Greenlaw; it’s been involved in close to $400 million worth of reported office and industrial buys in the past few months, either as an outright owner or in partnerships with other institutional and private investors.
Earlier this month, the Business Journal was first to report the firm’s purchase of the 2211 Michelson office tower in Irvine; the $116 million deal is one of two airport-area office buys it’s been involved in this fall as a co-investor.
Other recent deals include a pair of Salt Lake City industrial buys; the nearly 1 million square feet of space Greenlaw bought there sold for close to a combined $78 million.
Another $20.5 million was spent by the firm for a Riverside industrial property.
