Tenant demand for creative-office space in Orange County is about to get its biggest test yet at an office complex across the street from Angel Stadium of Anaheim.
Anaheim Corporate Office Plaza, a five-building business park on Orangewood Avenue next to the Santa Ana River, will get a nearly $10 million makeover beginning early next year.
The plan is to turn the nearly 30-year-old buildings at the campus, which total about 300,000 square feet, into high-end creative space called Axis.
The redevelopment will add a variety of open floor plans, high ceilings, indoor and outdoor meeting areas, and other contemporary features meant to appeal to tech, apparel, media and other tenants seeking less traditional offices.
An upscale brewery, restaurant or sports bar at the entrance of the park, which will cater to fans going to Angel Stadium, is also part of the makeover.
The project is being overseen by the local office of commercial real estate company Lincoln Properties Co. on behalf of the campus’ owner, Southfield, Mich.-based Seligman & Associates Inc.
It’s believed to be the largest creative-office redevelopment by square footage to date in OC. The Irvine office of architecture firm IA Interior Architects is heading up the project’s design.
The office plaza has one five-story office running about 108,000 square feet and four three-story buildings of a little less than 50,000 square feet each. The five buildings are about 50% leased to a mix of smaller tenants.
The trend of rehabbing older buildings into creative spaces has gotten plenty of traction in Silicon Valley and pockets of Los Angeles over the past few years but is still in its infancy here, with the majority of local projects taking place closer to John Wayne Airport.
Platinum Triangle
Anaheim Corporate Office Plaza’s location in the Platinum Triangle, which continues to get an influx of apartment development and will soon boast a new transit center, could appeal to tenants seeking a more urban office location than other sites in OC, according to Kevin Hayes, executive vice president for the Santa Ana office of Lincoln Properties.
The office site is less than a mile from the soon-to-open Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, or ARTIC, for which Lincoln Properties is handling leasing and property management. The 67,000-square-foot transportation center is being built at a reported cost of $127 million.
The plans for office renovations coincide with some recent notable office leasing activity in the Platinum Triangle.
OC Agency
A few blocks from the Anaheim Corporate Office Plaza at the 14-story Orange Center Tower, the Orange County Social Services Agency is nearing a deal to lease about 132,133 square feet of the building in what would be OC’s largest new office lease of the year.
The 15-year lease is valued at a little less than $60 million, according to documents filed with the Orange County Board of Supervisors, which oversees the agency and must approve the lease.
The creative-office plans for Anaheim Corporate Office Plaza mark a change in strategy for Seligman & Associates, which has owned the campus since 2005.
It put up the property for sale last year, but a deal was never completed.
Seligman paid a reported $68.2 million, or about $227 per square foot, for the campus in 2005, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
Retail Renovation
Lincoln Properties also plans a major renovation of a retail center it recently acquired a few blocks from the airport in Irvine.
The investor paid about $13 million for Michelson Marketplace, a 32,560-square-foot retail center near the intersection of Michelson Drive and Von Karman Avenue.
A major renovation of the property, expected to cost a few million dollars, is scheduled to start next year and will focus on reinvigorating the center’s food court and helping the site draw more than lunch-goers from nearby offices.
A new roof and second level of seating are planned for the food court, with renovations designed to give the center a similar vibe to the Anaheim Packing House and other new food halls that have recently popped up in OC.
Larger restaurants or bars that would bring in more evening and weekend traffic are also planned for the center, said Hayes, who estimated that the renovations should be completed by mid-2015. The Long Beach office of Perkowitz + Ruth Architects is handling the redesign of the shopping center.
The property was purchased from an affiliate of a local church. Colliers International’s Michelle Schierberl, Donald Ellis, Jereme Snyder and Mark Joens represented the seller in the deal, and Lincoln represented itself.
