Sunstone Hotel Investors Inc. is the latest hospitality company getting a prime view at one of Irvine Co.’s new area office towers.
The real estate investment trust, whose market value is about $3.6 billion, recently signed a lease to take the top floor of Irvine Co.’s 200 Spectrum Center office tower in the Irvine Spectrum, real estate sources tell the Business Journal.
The lease is for the entire 21st floor and covers about 22,150 square feet. Sunstone plans to move its headquarters to the building late in the year, the sources said.
The hotel investor has been based at the Vantis office campus in Aliso Viejo. In last week’s Business Journal, I reported on the sale of 120 Vantis, a five-story office leased to Sunstone and other tenants, to Costa Mesa-based Brookhollow Group.
Sunstone’s new lease in the Irvine tower makes 200 Spectrum’s occupancy nearly full. The 425,000-square-foot office opened last year; its largest tenant is Mazda North American Operations.
It’s Orange County’s tallest office, along with its sister 400 Spectrum Center tower, which opened last month. The 400 Spectrum property is already 40% preleased, Irvine Co. said last month. The largest tenant signed so far is Irvine-based cybersecurity firm Cylance Inc., which will lease six floors.
Terms of Sunstone’s lease haven’t been disclosed, and the company hasn’t referenced the headquarters move in regulatory filings. Its next earnings report is scheduled for the end of the month.
Irvine Co. had been listing asking rents for the tower’s top-floor space at about $5.25 per square foot.
That would mean Sunstone could be seen as getting a discount, at least compared to what another hotel investor is reportedly paying at Irvine Co.’s 520 Newport Center Drive tower next to Fashion Island.
Last year, I reported Tarsadia Investments LLC leased the top floor of 520 Newport Center, a 21-story office Irvine Co. that opened in 2015 as OC’s first big new speculative office since the recession.
Other tenants there include financial firms and hotel developer R.D. Olson Development.
The Tarsadia lease was reportedly signed for at least $8.50 per square foot, per month in one of the priciest deals ever reported in the county. Later leases there have exceeded $9 per square foot, according to local brokerage data.
Tarsadia Investments and affiliates invest in hotel properties and other assets; it was formed in 2011 following the restructuring of locally based Tarsadia Hotels, one of the largest privately owned hotel operators and developers in the U.S., whose holdings have included the 1,033-room Anaheim Marriott.
Sunstone’s lone OC hotel property is the Hyatt Regency Newport Beach. Its portfolio consists of 27 upscale hotels in all, totaling about 13,000 rooms.
San Clemente Resale
The largest office building in San Clemente has traded hands for the second time in as many years.
A private investor based in Huntington Beach and listed in property records as Gulton Court LLC, recently completed the purchase of 1311 Calle Batido, an 85,316-square-foot property that’s part of the 100-acre Talega Business Park.
The building is on 7.5 acres about 2 miles inland from the San Diego (I-5) Freeway, just off Avenida Pico.
Abington Emerson Investments bought the building in March 2016 for a reported $14.2 million. The sale to Gulton Court was for about 16% more at $16.5 million, according to property records.
The two-story office, built in 2002, was valued at $23.3 million a decade ago, when it was fully leased to New Jersey-based Quest Diagnostics Inc., the country’s largest provider of medical testing services.
Quest downsized its operations there and now occupies about 20,000 square feet, CoStar Group Inc. records show.
Saddleback Church moved to the site about four years ago, occupying another 40,000 square feet for its services in San Clemente, according to CoStar data.
The new owners of the office took out an $8 million loan with the Bank of Hemet to finance the deal, records show.
