Bausch & Lomb Inc. is building up a sizable Orange County presence in Aliso Viejo.
The Rochester, N.Y.-based eye healthcare company, which made Aliso Viejo the hub of its surgical business early last year, now is planning to more than double the size of its local operations.
Bausch signed a lease for an additional 35,955 square feet at 30 Enterprise, one of two four-story office buildings recently built by local developer Parker Properties LP at its 1.7 million-square-foot Summit Office Campus.
The healthcare company already had been leasing about 24,628 square feet of space at 30 Enterprise from a deal signed in 2008. That deal will be wrapped into the new lease, which will run for 10 years.
The combined 61,000-square-foot deal takes effect at the end of the year, according to officials with Parker Properties, which built the buildings in a partnership with RREEF Alternative Investments, a unit of Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG.
Terms of the lease weren’t disclosed. Bausch’s monthly lease rates are expected to be in the $2.50 per-square-foot range at the 134,726-square-foot building, which now is more than 90% full.
The lease, which includes some higher-end research and lab space, brings room for as many as 150 new jobs in Bausch’s Aliso Viejo operations.
How many of those jobs will be new hires hasn’t been disclosed. Bausch is expected to relocate some positions from offices it has in Los Angeles County and St. Louis. About a dozen local job openings are listed on the company’s website.
Bausch was taken private in 2007 after being acquired by private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC in a $3.6 billion deal.
From a personnel standpoint, the lease is likely to result in one of the larger healthcare relocations or additions OC’s seen this year.
It would rival the job gains seen when Los Angeles-based cancer drug maker Abraxis BioScience Inc. moved its research and development operations, and about 100 workers, from Marina del Rey to a building it bought in Costa Mesa this March.
Other area eye surgical business with large presences in OC include Abbott Laboratories’ Santa Ana-based Abbott Medical Optics Inc., which employs about 530 people locally, and Alcon Inc., which employs about 800 people in Irvine.
From a job perspective, OC appears to be benefiting from Bausch’s 2008 decision to acquire Eyeonics Inc., an Aliso Viejo company that makes replacement lenses used in cataract surgeries.
Eyeonics had leased about 13,000 square feet in a nearby Aliso Viejo office, while also operating a 12,000-square-foot manufacturing and distribution facility in Rancho Cucamonga, prior to that acquisition.
Following that deal, Bausch opted to consolidate its surgical unit in Aliso Viejo, while folding Eyeonics into the bigger company’s existing structure.
J. Andy Corley, Eyeonics’ cofounder and former chief executive, was made global president of Bausch’s surgical products division after his company was bought for undisclosed terms.
“We’re housing more of our surgical colleagues under one roof, a large portion of which is moving our customer service center from San Dimas to Aliso Viejo, allowing us to better meet the needs of our customers,” Corley said in a statement.
Keeping Bausch’s surgical business in Aliso Viejo put the company “right in the center of the heartbeat of where the ophthalmic innovation world resides, southern OC. This is where the action is,” Corley told the Business Journal last year.
Eyeonics had annual sales of about $40 million when it was bought. The company makes Crystalens replacement lens, which is used by people who have undergone cataract surgery.
Besides Crystalens, Bausch sells other eye surgical products, including other intraocular lenses; machines used to remove the eye’s natural lens during cataract surgery; devices used to help the eye retain its shape during cataract surgery; and hand-held surgical instruments.
Summit Offices
Bausch’s expanded lease largely fills 30 Enterprise, one of two new offices that were built alongside a new Renaissance ClubSport hotel at the Summit campus. The buildings are across the street from Pacific Life Insurance Co.’s corporate office, which runs next to the San Joaquin Hills (73) Toll Road.
Other tenants at the 30 Enterprise include Marvell Semiconductors Inc. and insurance agency LaBarre Oksnee.
Now developer Parker Properties is turning more of its attention to the other new four-story building at the Summit, 20 Enterprise, which largely is empty.
Initially the company was hoping to fill 20 Enterprise with one big tenant. Now it’s looking at smaller tenants taking 10,000 to 15,000 square feet, according to Russ Parker, vice chairman for Parker Properties.
“Interest and leasing activity is definitely holding up,” Parker said. “The good news is there are a lot of prospects” whose existing leases are coming up for renewal, he said.
Ted Snell and Carol Trapani of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. represented Parker Properties in the lease. John Minervini of Cushman & Wakefield Inc.’s Los Angeles office represented Bausch.
Interior design work in Bausch’s new space is being done by San Francisco-based Gensler, which also helped get the company’s initial space certified for being environmentally friendly. n
