Union Place, the first big apartment complex to be built in Placentia in over a decade, has sold.
An affiliate of San Diego-based MG Properties Group late last month closed on the purchase of the 125-unit Union Place at 1500 Cherry St. The three-story complex is about a mile north of the Riverside (91) Freeway next to Orangethorpe Avenue.
MG Properties paid about $44.2 million, or $354,000 per unit, according to CoStar Group Inc. records. It took out a $29.8 million loan to finance the deal, property records show.
The Resmark Cos., a Los Angeles-based real estate investor and developer with an office in Irvine, built and sold the complex, which at the time of its 2012 opening was the first sizable rental complex built in the city in over a decade.
Units there are about 1,243-square-feet on average and go for $2,342 a month, according to marketing materials of Irvine-based apartment brokerage Moran & Co. Those marketing materials say it’s the only class A rental complex within a two-mile radius.
The Placentia complex was being shopped by Moran & Co. along with a 157-unit Resmark rental property in Santa Clarita that it also owned. It’s unknown whether that property changed hands in the October transaction; it’s not listed on MG Properties’ website.
MG Properties is a privately held real estate investor and operator that’s snapped up a few Orange County rental properties in the past couple years.
Last year it partnered with Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. in Brighton, Mass., to buy Madison Park, a 768-unit complex in Anaheim, for an estimated $122 million, or $158,000 per unit, in the largest reported local apartment trade of the year.
The company says it manages a portfolio of about 12,000 apartment homes valued at more than $1.5 billion.
Easter Seals Asset
Irvine-based CapRock Partners LLC has flipped an office just off the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway that it bought last year and renovated.
The Easter Seals Southern California Inc. recently closed on the purchase of 1063 McGaw Ave., a 55,474-square-foot office in Irvine across the freeway from the campus of Santa Ana-based title insurer First American Financial Corp.
CapRock paid about $9.6 million for the building last year, according to property records. It said then that it planned a major renovation of the building in an effort to appeal to tenants looking for creative-office space near John Wayne Airport.
BigRentz.com, a construction equipment rental company that moved its headquarters to the two-story building in 2013, is the largest tenant there, leasing the top floor.
Easter Seals paid $14.5 million for the building this month, according to CapRock officials. It’s unknown whether the nonprofit organization, which serves children and adults with disabilities and special needs, plans to occupy any space there.
It also owns a roughly 10,500-square-foot building on 17th Street in Santa Ana, where its Southern California operations are based.
Scott Read at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank represented CapRock in the latest transaction, and Tim Arguello at Lee & Associates represented the buyer.
Manhattan Move
An affiliate of Newport Beach-based KBS Realty is eyeing a former church site across the street from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station in downtown New York for a new retail development.
The company’s KBS Strategic Opportunity REIT II Inc. said in regulatory filings that it struck a deal to pay $38.4 million for an 80% stake in the midtown Manhattan development site that, according to local news reports, was formerly the site of a monastery associated with the Church of St. John the Baptist.
KBS and its partner in the deal, Woodbridge, N.J.-based Onyx Equities, plan to raze the existing site and build a two-story retail property of about 30,000-square-feet at an estimated cost of $14.2 million.
It’s the latest development project being undertaken by KBS, which traditionally has focused on buying existing commercial real estate properties.
In the past year it has ventured deeper into the development business, partnering with local companies for a handful of apartment, office and other ground-up projects across the country.
KBS chairman and president Peter Bren, brother of Irvine Company chairman Donald Bren, works out of the company’s New York office.
