The U.S. operations of Japan-based Toshiba Corp. should maintain a sizeable presence in Irvine following the sale of the company’s main local campus in the city, real estate sources say.
Irvine-based real estate investor LBA Realty last week closed on the purchase of Toshiba’s 26-acre campus at 9740 Irvine Blvd. in the Irvine Spectrum. The property is near the intersection of Irvine Boulevard and Alton Parkway on the southern edge of the former El Toro Marine base.
The nearly 450,000-square-foot office and industrial campus sold for about $65 million, or nearly $145 per square foot.
It’s the largest single-property commercial real estate sale in South Orange County reported this year, according to data from market tracker CoStar Group Inc.
The campus was marketed by JLL’s Louis Tomaselli, Steve Wagner and Jay Nugent with the Irvine office of the brokerage.
JLL’s local office also will be used by the new owners to market the campus to new tenants when Toshiba departs the property following a 12-month lease-back period.
LBA plans extensive renovations to the campus following Toshiba’s departure, perhaps turning the property into a multitenant facility, real estate sources told the Business Journal.
Specifics hadn’t been finalized, the sources said.
Toshiba, whose Toshiba America Information Systems subsidiary makes a variety of electronics, printing and storage systems products through local operating companies, announced plans this past April to sell the Irvine campus and look for a more efficient operations location elsewhere in the region.
The company is now close to finalizing a sizeable office lease in Irvine, sources told the Business Journal.
The sale is “in line with Toshiba’s consistent policy of making efficient use of group assets and improving its balance sheet,” the company said in a statement.
Toshiba is the third largest foreign-owned company with operations in OC based on employee count, and its Irvine campus houses about 800 members of its staff. It has a number of operating companies based out of the nearly 30-year-old facility.
The company made the Irvine campus the U.S. headquarters of its information equipment business in 1987 and also made PCs there for 15 years ending in 2002, when it converted a good portion of the facility into office space and a warehouse.
Industrial Sale
The Irvine purchase comes about two weeks after LBA sold a batch of its West Coast industrial properties to an affiliate of New York-based private equity giant Blackstone Group.
The Business Journal reported in September that LBA reached a deal to sell to Blackstone a 50-building, 12-million-square-foot portfolio of large industrial properties, most on the West Coast, in what’s apparently the largest industrial sale in the country this year.
Sources familiar with the transaction said the portfolio should trade for nearly $1.5 billion.
Property records show that at least some of the buildings have changed hands since mid-November. CoStar records indicate seven OC-based industrial buildings in Tustin, Garden Grove, and Anaheim were part of the transaction and total about 480,000 square feet combined.
The largest area building CoStar confirmed as being part of the sale is 3340 E. La Palma Ave. in Anaheim, a 154,000-square-foot industrial facility used by lighting products maker Intense Lighting, whose headquarters are in the building.
