Toshiba Corp. is putting its massive Irvine office facility on the market and looking for space to lease elsewhere in Orange County.
The Tokyo-based company—whose Toshiba America Inc. subsidiary makes a variety of electronics, printing and storage systems products through an assortment of locally based business units—last week said it would be listing for sale a 26-acre office and industrial campus it owns in Irvine Spectrum.
The two-building property at 9740 Irvine Blvd. has about 450,000 square feet of office, manufacturing, warehouse and distribution space. It’s the largest facility in Orange County for Toshiba, which is the third largest foreign-owned company with operations here based on employee count.
The campus houses about 800 employees of Toshiba, which has a number of operating companies based out of the nearly 30-year-old facility.
That employment figure is down by more than 100 as of a few months ago—the company has made recent cuts in one of its personal computer divisions and also sold a medical systems division last month to Tokyo-based Canon Inc.
Toshiba officials said the company no longer needs as much industrial space as it has at the campus and that it will seek more traditional office space elsewhere in Orange County.
“We’re a very different company than when we moved here,” a company spokesperson said.
Toshiba officials said they’re looking for a new location for existing operations, preferably close to the current campus.
“We’d prefer to stay in the area,” but would explore options elsewhere in OC, the spokesperson said.
It plans to lease space at its new local office, the company said.
Outside of new development projects under way or proposed in Irvine and Tustin, there are only a handful of existing office projects in OC that have enough empty space to hold 800 employees.
The company is likely to need in excess of 150,000 square feet, which would make Toshiba one of the area’s largest tenants in the market for new space.
Toshiba is searching for an office “that represents what the company is now,” the spokesperson said.
26 Acres
Toshiba’s existing campus is expected to fetch a sales price between $80 million and $100 million, according to real estate sources familiar with the property.
The local office of brokerage JLL has the listing for the campus, which is near the intersection of Irvine Boulevard and Alton Parkway on the southern edge of the former El Toro Marine base.
The Irvine office of JLL also is working with the company on searching for its new space. A time frame for completing the sale and lease deals hasn’t been disclosed.
The company’s existing property holds the potential for a creative-office conversion, depending on the buyer’s plans.
The campus’ main office building has close to 100,000 square feet. Toshiba has converted a good portion of a larger industrial building into office space over the years.
“It’s not the most efficient use” of the property, the company spokesperson said.
Toshiba has a trio of operating businesses based out of the Irvine facility.
• Its Toshiba America Information Systems division makes laptops, DVD players, camcorders and other consumer electronics products.
• Toshiba America Business Systems makes copiers, fax machines, printers and toner products, among other business lines.
• Toshiba America Electronic Components makes flash memory-based storage solutions, solid state drives, and hard disk drives.
Other divisions not based in Irvine also have some operations at the campus. The company last month completed the sale of one of those divisions, a medical systems operating unit that makes diagnostic imaging systems, to Canon in a $5.9 billion deal.
That division’s U.S. operations—Toshiba America Medical Systems—has operations elsewhere in OC, in addition to the main Irvine campus. A decision on relocating that division hasn’t been made, the company said.
