CT Realty Investors, one of Orange County’s biggest industrial investors and developers in recent years, has added another local office building to its portfolio.
The company, which moved its headquarters from Aliso Viejo to Newport Beach this month, recently closed on the purchase of Centrum South, a five-story office just south of the Garden Grove (22) Freeway.
A Newport Beach-based private investor operating under the name Scientific Investments sold the 90,191-square-foot office for a little under $20.5 million, or about $227 per square foot. It acquired the building in 2010 for an undisclosed price.
The building, at 725 W. Town & Country Road, was about 83% occupied at the time of the recent sale, according to brokerage data.
CT Realty has recently increased its office investment activity. Last year, the privately held investor paid about $30 million for a three-building office complex in Lake Forest that’s home to the headquarters of Del Taco Holdings Inc.
Chief Executive James “Watty” Watson said at the time of the Del Taco office buy that his company was looking to invest in more office deals in and around Orange County, due in part to the lack of ground-up industrial development opportunities in the area.
It has bought more than 6 million square feet of industrial buildings and more than 600 acres of land for industrial development in Southern California and Texas since 2010.
Brokers with Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s capital markets team in Newport Beach who recently moved to the company from CBRE Group Inc. worked on the Centrum South deal.
It’s the second Orange office sale that the new NGKF capital markets team has been involved in since the start of the year. In January, it represented the seller of Centrum North, an eight-story medical and office building on the other side of the 22 Freeway. Children’s Hospital of Orange County paid $44 million, or $245 per square foot, for 1120 W. La Veta Ave., a 179,279-square-foot office next to its main campus.
Sonya Dopp-Grech, senior vice president and director of the healthcare services group at NAI Capital’s Irvine office, represented CHOC in the Centrum North transaction.
The two Centrum buildings were built in the mid-1980s on opposite sides of the freeway by McLachlan Investment Co., a large area office developer at the time. They were given the Centrum name due to their central location near the intersection of several of OC’s big freeways.
SoCal Sale
Piedmont Office Realty Trust Inc. has put its two Orange County offices up for sale.
The Johns Creek, Ga.-based real estate investment trust, whose national portfolio totals about 20 million square feet, late last month listed its four-building Southern California office portfolio for sale.
It includes two Los Angeles properties, a building near John Wayne Airport in Irvine, and a property in Brea.
The portfolio totals about 1 million square feet.
Prices for the individual properties haven’t been disclosed; the two OC assets should trade for more than $100 million on a combined basis, according to brokers listing the buildings.
Jeff Cole and Ed Hernandez, brokers with the Irvine office of Cushman & Wakefield Inc., have the listing for the two OC buildings, the 1901 Main St. office in Irvine, and the Fairway Center II property in Brea.
The Main Street building has eight stories encompassing about 173,000 square feet at the intersection of Main Street and MacArthur Boulevard, a few blocks from the airport.
The 15-year-old property is fully leased, with tenants including Conexant Systems Inc., Morgan Stanley and Bosch Home Appliances.
In Brea, the company also has listed the 134,000-square-foot Fairway Center II property for sale.
The three-story property is at 675 Placentia Ave. near the intersection of Imperial Highway and the Orange (57) Freeway. It’s 97% leased to five tenants, according to marketing materials for the property.
Piedmont in 2003 paid about $43 million for the Irvine building and $23 million for the Brea property, according to regulatory filings.
