The soon-to-open Orange County office of Coldwell Banker Commercial Alliance, a New York-based commercial brokerage, is beefing up its local operations by acquiring another area brokerage with a niche in representing smaller businesses.
The company announced that Newport Beach-based Bridge Commercial Properties will become part of CBC Alliance’s OC office, which is based at the 2600 Michelson tower in Irvine and is set to open in July.
Scott Johnstone, president and founder of Bridge Commercial Properties, will serve as executive vice president at Coldwell Banker Commercial Alliance, the companies announced.
Bridge Commercial has a team of seven employees and focuses on acquisition and disposition advisory services, corporate tenant representation, and other services, similar functions as CBC Alliance.
It has tended to gear itself toward smaller-sized clients, a focus that aligns with CBC Alliance, which started operations last summer and is billing itself as the first national real estate services firm dedicated to serving small businesses and the owners of small and midsize commercial properties.
CBC Alliance, unaffiliated with Coldwell Banker’s residential operations, announced plans to open its Irvine office in January. The Irvine office is one of three regional offices it has announced so far, along with New York and Denver.
It plans to have about 20 brokers in the office, including the six brokers coming from Bridge Commercial, within the next two years, according to CBC Alliance Principal Michael Dorsey, who heads the Irvine branch.
Dorsey and Johnstone previously worked together at the Newport Beach office of Grubb & Ellis Co.
Johnstone also is the author of “Million Dollar Broker,” a commercial real estate how-to book, and heads a related online brokerage training academy.
IE Acres
Irvine-based Foremost Communities Inc., a residential land investment company, has closed on a land deal in Riverside County that’s being described as the largest in terms of acreage in the Inland Empire in seven years.
The company recently completed the purchase of Toscana, a 960-acre masterplanned community south of Corona, about nine miles south of the I-15 and the Riverside (91) interchange.
Terms of the deal, made with a Temecula-based seller named Sunny Sage LLC, weren’t disclosed.
Entitlement for the project has been ongoing for about 10 years. Foremost is expected to finalize the development plans and intends to develop the site and initiate a builder lot sales program, according to Tom Doyle, a founding principal at Irvine-based land brokerage Whittlesey Doyle.
Doyle—whose company is changing its name to WD Land—represented the buyer and the seller in the transaction.
Toscana is expected to hold 1,443 homes in a mix of attached and detached products.
The sale comes about 15 months after Foremost closed on a 300-acre parcel of raw land at the western edge of Corona, where a housing development called Sierra Bella is planned.
That project will hold about 250 homes; Foremost and its financial partner paid about $3.5 million for the land, picking up the property at a courthouse auction.
Greenwich, Conn.-based Starwood Capital Group Global LP, a real estate investment firm, is among Foremost’s financial partners, along with Newport Beach-based Pimco.
Foremost and its affiliates owned or managed more than 2,700 residential lots prior to the Toscana purchase.
Turner Revamping
Newport Beach-based Turner Real Estate Investments has snapped up another midsize office near John Wayne Airport where it plans a substantial renovation.
The real estate investment firm this month closed on the purchase of 1300 Quail Street, a 30,027-square-foot office a few blocks from the intersection of Jamboree Road and MacArthur Boulevard in Newport Beach.
Mahoney & Grau Properties, also of Newport Beach, was the seller.
The 1974 building is reported to have sold for $5.7 million, or about $190 per square foot, according to brokerage data.
It’s about 87% leased and is expected to see a substantial renovation.
Brian Garbutt and Allen Basso of Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services’ Irvine office represented the buyer, while Sean Ahern in the brokerage’s Newport Beach office represented the seller.
Garbutt and Basso also represented Turner in a $3.4 million deal the investor made in March for a 30,000-square-foot office building about two miles away in Costa Mesa. That building, called the Bristol Corporate Center, also is slated for a makeover.
Garbutt said the renovations should bring the office’s quality up to par with other higher-end buildings in Newport Beach’s Dove/Quail submarket.
