TGS Management LLC has filed plans to build a new office campus on land it bought in the Irvine Spectrum two years ago, in what looks likely to become one of the more unique build-to-suit projects seen in Orange County in years.
The Irvine-based quantitative finance hedge fund, run by one of the area’s most under-the-radar billionaires, Fred Taylor, recently filed plans with the City of Irvine to develop a new, 207,395-square-foot office building on land it owns just north of the Santa Ana (5) Freeway, between Bake Parkway and Alton Parkway.
It paid an affiliate of Five Point Holdings LLC (NYSE: FPH) $240 million for the vacant, 42-acre agricultural site in 2023, marking one of the largest local land purchases in recent memory.
The construction of the office campus is expected to push the firm’s investment in the Irvine site well over $300 million.
The new offices will mark a significant step up in space for the highly secretive firm. It currently leases an entire building, running 115,000 square feet, at the Irvine Co.’s Spectrum Terrace office campus.
The company could not be reached for comment on the project and its intended timeline for construction.
Low Density Project
Taylor, co-founder of TGS, formed Barranca Properties LLC—the entity that purchased the land parcel and is heading up the office project’s development—in late 2021, according to state records, suggesting that plans for the campus have been a possibility for some time.
The site it just bought is close to Barranca Parkway, near the intersection of the 405 and 5 freeways. The land is located just south of the FivePoint Gateway office complex, which now houses the campus of City of Hope and the local operations of chip designer Broadcom (Nasdaq: AVGO).
The 42-acre campus that TGS is proposing will be far less dense than most other office developments in the area.
The FivePoint campus, by example, runs about 72 acres and holds over a million square feet of office and medical buildings.
Its current base at Spectrum Terrace, which comprises nine for-lease buildings spanning approximately 1.1 million square feet, is on roughly 73 acres of land along Laguna Canyon Road.
City filings note that TGS’s proposed 207,395-square-foot office development would have building site coverage of 6.5%, where a maximum of 65% coverage is allowed. About 65% of the total site is expected to hold landscaping, exceeding the minimum 15% site coverage requirement.
Exclusive, and Secretive
The new TGS campus, which will be closed off to the public via walls and berms running from 8 feet to 40 feet in height, isn’t needed to handle an influx of new employees, but rather to serve as a super-sized amenity package for those employees, it appears.
Filings with the city’s planning commission note that only about 100 people at most use the company’s current multi-story Spectrum Terrace office, which is fenced off from other buildings at the campus and counts a variety of amenities, including a rock-climbing wall, private gym and kitchen area. That’s roughly one-fifth the employee density that high-end offices of that size can typically hold.
The new development plans to ramp up its on-site amenities, according to city filings. In addition to the main office, which will run two stories and also include one level of underground parking, a 14,335-square-foot private recreation center is planned on the campus.
“The proposed development is a campus-style professional office site designed to create a park-like and pedestrian-oriented atmosphere, with two buildings connected by a network of landscaped features including pedestrian trails, meadows, courtyards, and recreational areas,” city filings said.
Other on-site amenities for employees are set to include a skate park, pool and sports courts, filings indicate.
Quant Masters
TGS, which launched more than 30 years ago as one of the first quantitative investing firms, uses computer algorithms to invest via a so-called “quant” strategy. It recently built a new data center for its operations, on the opposite side of the 405 from its current base at Spectrum Terrace.
“Our team includes researchers and engineers from some of the top universities in the world, winners of national and international competitions in math, physics, and informatics, former professors, and a cast of talented professionals,” TGS has said on its website.
Its website didn’t indicate any open positions at the company’s Irvine base as of last week.
TGS’s founding team includes Taylor, the late David Gelbaum and Andrew Shechtel. TGS also has offices in Princeton, N.J.
As of July, the Business Journal conservatively estimated Taylor’s wealth at $4.4 billion. He is a major philanthropist, although like TGS, his giving efforts are highly discreet and largely under the radar.
He’s said to be the primary backer of the Sequoia Climate Foundation, a non-profit that supports “ambitious organizations and coalitions catalyzing rapid emissions reductions, transforming global markets, and accelerating the transition to clean energy.”
Sequoia is based in Irvine, at a smaller office park that TGS previously used as its base and is said to be one of the world’s largest environmental-focused giving groups.
