The Orange County Board of Supervisors announced late last month its third class of inductees to the OC Hall of Fame, with Broadcom co-founder Henry Samueli and his wife, Susan, joining nine others in the latest class. An induction ceremony is scheduled for Dec. 9.
The Samuelis, who own the Anaheim Ducks and are funding the OCVibe development surrounding the Honda Center, were praised for their work with the Samueli Foundation, which has gifted over $1 billion to a variety of education- and health-focused causes.
Henry Samueli counts a 1.9% stake in Broadcom (Nasdaq: AVGO), which is worth nearly $30 billion, making him OC’s wealthiest resident. The chipmaking giant’s shares are up over 100% in the past year.
Other notables in this year’s inductee class for the OC Hall of Fame (HoF) include Ambassador Gaddi Vasquez, the Pacific Symphony’s Carl St. Claire, businessman and prominent philanthropist Ed Laird, and movie director James Cameron.
Prior inductees include the late William Lyon, Henry Segerstrom, Carl Karcher and Kobe Bryant, as well as restaurant entrepreneurs and philanthropists Charlie Zhang and Wing Lam and the Lee family.
Still no room at the OC HoF table for Irvine Co. chairman Don Bren.
Monthly office rents in Central OC average less than $2 per square foot, and the area has ample available space, with vacancy rates running about 15%, according to the latest data from brokerage Voit.
It is eye-opening, then, to see the OC Board of Supervisors signing off on a new office lease in Santa Ana with rents that far exceed the going rates in the airport area; it counts starting monthly rental rates of $3.45 PSF. See page 8 for more on the relocation of the county’s Health Care Agency.
The county also has the option to buy the building for $77 million or more over the next few years, equating to a price topping $450 PSF. That’s significantly higher than the going rate for a Santa Ana office.
The upside? It could have been costlier. Filings indicate that the county’s real estate advisors placed a $405 million price tag on constructing a new HCA clinic at the agency’s existing site along W. 17th St.
The county opted to relocate instead.
The existing facility on 17th Street runs about 124,600 sq. ft., meaning the county thought that building a new, comparably-sized building at the spot would have cost it well over $3,000 PSF, a largely unheard-of price for a building of its type.
OC Board of Supervisors made one financially sound decision of late: in October, the Sheriff-Coroner Department got the OK to get four free electric vehicles from Irvine’s Rivian (Nasdaq: RIVN), which offered to donate the EVs for training purposes.
Rivian’s also offered to provide free vehicles to the City of Laguna Beach, where the company has its flagship showroom along Coast Highway.
There are no indications that the EV maker has made any such deals in Irvine, despite having its HQ and significant operations there. Irvine’s police department thought it would be a better idea to spend some $150K on a souped-up Tesla Cybertruck.
