A real estate investment, management and development firm that started operations last year has made an office in Irvine near The Market Place shopping center its first investment.
Privately held Pendulum Property Partners closed on the purchase of 5 Peters Canyon, a three-story office just south of the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway next to the intersection of Jamboree Road and the 261 Toll Road.
The multitenant building, which totals 156,305 square feet, is on the same street as the Irvine headquarters of Kia Motors America.
Irvine-based Pendulum paid a little more than $41.6 million, or about $267 per square foot, for the building, where tenants include Medata Inc., Black & Veatch Corp. and Starwood Hotel & Resorts.
Recent additions to the office include Irvine-based homebuilder TRI Pointe Group Inc., which last year signed a roughly 20,000-square-foot lease to move its Southern California division there. The office is about 90% leased, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
It’s on nearly 10 acres, which provide an abundance of surface parking—a big selling point for large corporate users looking for space in the area, the buyer said.
The office was sold by Boston-based TA Realty in a deal brokered by Eastdil Secured’s K.C. Scheipe and Adam Edwards, who work in the brokerage’s Irvine office.
Pendulum executives said they partnered with a large, undisclosed institutional investor on the buy, which is the largest office deal reported to have closed in Orange County so far this year.
TA Realty acquired the office in 2007 for a reported $51 million. The institutional investor has been selling a number of area properties it bought about a decade ago around the peak of the last market cycle.
It also has listed for sale Spectrum Tower, a seven-story office in Laguna Hills it bought in 2007 near the intersection of Lake Forest Drive and the San Diego (I-5) Freeway.
Pendulum is looking for office and retail assets to buy anywhere between Los Angeles and San Diego, but wanted a building close to home as its first deal, said Managing Partner Kevin Hayes at the firm.
“The goal was to buy something in Orange County that we felt good about,” said Hayes, who started the firm about seven months ago.
The company’s looking to spend about $200 million in investments annually in a mix of stable, income-producing assets and value-add deals, according to Hayes. The 5 Peters Canyon buy falls into the former category, he said.
“This acquisition is designed to be a longer-term strategic hold for our firm with solid cash flows throughout,” Hayes said. “We believe over the life of our hold period Irvine will only continue to strengthen and the nearby development of Tustin Legacy will transform the county landscape for the better.”
Hayes previously headed the Orange County operations of Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co., which is overseeing Flight, a multibuilding creative-office project planned for a 38.7-acre portion of the Tustin Legacy development, among other local deals.
Pendulum also has its eye on some ground-up development projects of its own—it’s working on a multibuilding retail project in the city of Ontario that would be built next to Citizens Business Bank Arena, which has about 10,000 seats and hosts various events, as well as a minor league hockey franchise and arena soccer team.
The seven-building retail project would total about 73,000 square feet and be surrounded by a slate of several thousand apartments that are also planned for the immediate vicinity.
Hayes said he’s hoping to get environmental-related entitlement work completed for the Ontario project by September.
