A North Carolina bank with an existing presence in Newport Beach made a play on a new location in the affluent coastal town.
Raleigh, North Carolina-based First Citizens Bank paid $32.7 million for the five-floor and 108,112-square-foot Newport Plaza building according to CoStar data.
The financial institution has a commercial banking branch at 1201 Dove St, Suite 150, Newport Beach. First Citizens Bank’s new property, about two miles from John Wayne Airport, is a few blocks away at 895 Dove St.
CoStar listed New York-based Goldman Sachs Asset Management as the seller.
The deal was completed on Aug. 8, per CoStar, with First Citizens Bank paying $302-per-square-foot for the building.
Tenants leasing space at Newport Plaza at the time of the sale included office sharing company Regus, law firm Newmeyer & Dillion LLP and Canadian homebuilder Intracorp Homes.
It’s not immediately clear whether the bank plans an expansion of its operations in Orange County or is buying the building as an investment. First Citizens Bank did not return requests for comment as of press time last week.
First Citizens Bank ranked No. 17 on the Business Journal’s most recent annual list of banks operating in Orange County, reporting $1.2 billion in deposits as of June 30, 2024, and an estimated 60 local employees.
It’s been active in Orange such as providing $18.6 million in financing for a joint venture between Rancho Santa Margarita-based Cypress West Partners and New York-based asset manager TPG Angelo Gordon. The financing, announced earlier this month, funded the acquisition and recapitalization of a medical office portfolio with properties in Tucson, Arizona and Las Vegas.
First Citizens Bank was founded in 1898 as the Bank of Smithfield. The financial institution expanded beyond North Carolina’s borders in 1994, when it bought a location in West Virginia.
The bank, now one of the nation’s 20 largest financial institutions with $200 billion in assets, is publicly traded with a $25 billion market cap (Nasdaq: FCNCA).
Airport Area Deals
The Newport Plaza deal is the latest commercial real estate transaction in Orange County’s Airport Area market.
Intracorp, coincidentally one of the tenants at 895 Dove St., bought a 22,956-square-foot office building at 1401 Quail St. for $16.8 million in July.
Newport Summit, a 111,544-square-foot office building at 19600 Fairchild Road in Irvine, sold for $34.5 million in February.
Formosa Ltd., the Taiwan-based multinational conglomerate owned by Crystal Cove executive Joe Wen, bought a two-building office campus at 5000 Birch St. in Newport Beach for $32.8 million, or $106 per square feet, in April.
Orange County’s Office Market
The Airport Area was also the top region within Orange County for office deals between April 1 and June 30, according to a Savills US market report.
Office lease deals ticked upwards in the second quarter of 2025, with most deals signed for spaces of at least 30,000 square feet. Orange County saw 1.8 million square feet of leasing activity last quarter – nearly 42% higher than Jan. 1 through March 31 and up 19.3%, year-over-year.
“A significant portion of this quarter’s deal volume came from the Airport Area submarket across all industry types,” the Savills report for Q2 2025 said.
Some of the biggest lease transactions in the Airport Area last quarter were UC Irvine’s new 62,977-square-foot lease at 5000 Birch, Zillow’s 60,714-square-foot renewal at 2600 Michelson Drive and Callahan & Blaine’s 44,789-square-foot relocation to 19900 MacArthur Blvd.
The Airport Area has the largest inventory of office space – nearly 45.7 square feet – in Orange County, per data shared by JLL. South County has 23.3 million square feet of inventory, followed by 17.4 million square feet in Central County, 9.6 million square feet in North County and about 4.2 million square feet in West County.
