The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange is looking to raise funds for its impending move of its operations to Garden Grove by selling its administrative headquarters in Orange.
The Marywood Pastoral Center, a 15-acre hilltop campus located in a largely residential neighborhood of Orange, a few blocks east of the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway, was just listed for sale.
The campus includes about 100,000 square feet of offices, classrooms, auditorium and other space. It is expected to fetch offers in the $25 million to $30 million range.
The Marywood campus is located on the site of a one-time all-girls Catholic high school, and also has a chapel, library, cafeteria and gym. It has been used for diocese offices since the 1970s.
Potential buyers include those looking to use the space for educational uses, government, corporate and other religious uses, according to brokers with CBRE Group Inc., which has the listing for the property.
“This is one of the largest religious facilities to be marketed for sale in Southern California in recent years,” said Eric Knowles, who heads up CBRE’s national religious facilities practice and is based in the company’s San Diego office.
The site, located at 2811 E. Villa Real Drive, is likely to appeal to another church that’s looking to expand, or private religious schools, according to Knowles.
The Marywood sale will help the diocese cover the costs of buying and renovating the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, which it acquired late last year in a bankruptcy auction and closed on earlier this year.
It paid $57.5 million for the cathedral, several other buildings, and the rest of the 30.9-acre campus. Plans call for the conversion of the Garden Grove site—which has been renamed Christ Cathedral—into the new cathedral and administrative headquarters for the 1.2 million-member diocese.
Those functions had been split between the Maywood Pastoral Center and Holy Family Cathedral in Orange for decades.
The diocese is expected to spend several million dollars to renovate the 2,800-seat Crystal Cathedral—which has long been home to the Hour of Power television show—to fit Catholic worship requirements. It plans to vacate the Marywood campus once it moves the bishop’s administrative offices to the Garden Grove site.
Keeping both facilities would be redundant, according to Knowles.
“There’s only one bishop,” he said.
Fort Worth Bishop Kevin Vann last month was named to head of the local diocese after Bishop Tod Brown retires in December.
The property’s location in a largely residential neighborhood holds the potential to appeal to homebuilders, but the site isn’t going to be marketed specifically to residential developers, CBRE’s Ted Snell said. Getting entitlement approvals for residential development likely would add too many delays to the sale, said Snell, a broker in CBRE’s Newport Beach office who’s marketing the property along with Knowles, Christopher Bates and Susan Chaplin.
The Marywood campus sale stands to be the latest in a string of notable real estate deals involving area churches.
Fullerton’s Eastside Christian Church closed on a deal last year to buy a pair of Anaheim commercial buildings that are being redeveloped to serve as the growing congregation’s new campus.
The church paid $20 million for the 20-acre property, a one-time site of Boeing Co.’s sprawling operations in the city. A grand opening of the new Anaheim campus is planned for next month.
Eastside in turn sold its existing 91,000-square-foot campus in Fullerton to Dong Shin Presbyterian, a Korean-American church already based in Fullerton. That deal closed this summer for a reported $16.6 million.
There tends to be “a domino effect” when one church moves or buys a larger property and other area churches take over space left behind, Knowles said.
