Alton Corporate Plaza, a two-building office park in Irvine, has traded hands for more than $30 million, according to real estate sources.
The 205,000-square-foot office complex was sold to Alton CP LLC, a venture headed up by Houston’s Hines Interests LP, and a real estate fund managed by Los Angeles-based private equity firm Oaktree Capital Management LP.
The complex includes a pair of two-story offices at 1733 and 1833 Alton Parkway, a few blocks from Red Hill Avenue.
Tenants there include JPMorgan Chase & Co., which leases about two-thirds of the complex, as well as Source Interlink Magazine and Nexus IS Inc. The building is full, with no leases expiring until mid-2014.
Terms of the sale, which was completed late last month, weren’t disclosed. Sources familiar with the deal put the likely price at about $32.5 million, or roughly $160 per square foot.
The deal appears to be the priciest low-rise office sale seen in Orange County so far this year, based on brokerage data.
The complex—built in two stages between 1972 and 1984—was reportedly being marketed last year with an initial asking price of about $37 million.
Foster City-based Legacy Partners Commercial Inc. was the seller. It’s the second big OC office sale that the real estate investor has made in the past few months.
In May, the company sold the 10-story Lakeside Tower in the South Coast Metro area of Santa Ana to foreign investors for about $37 million. That 216,364-square-foot tower, at 4 Hutton Centre Drive, traded hands for about $170 per square foot.
On the acquisition front, Legacy Partners is working with Newport Beach-based KBS Realty Advisors on a non-traded real estate investment trust that is looking to raise upward of $2.8 billion to invest in apartment complexes. The company’s also said to be eyeing a few local development opportunities.
Local Buy
The purchase of Alton Corporate Plaza is believed to be the first local buy for the Hines-Oaktree venture. The two real estate investors have made close to $75 million in office investments in OC over the past year or so, counting separate deals and the joint buy of Alton Corporate Plaza.
Hines sold the 2211 Michelson Drive office tower in Irvine—which it co-developed—in mid-2010 for about $103 million. One of its business units then snapped up another fully leased midrise office in Irvine, at 17600 Gillette Ave., for $20.4 million.
Most Notable Deal
Oaktree’s most notable office buy here of late was about a year ago, when it paid around $20 million for 17885 Von Karman Ave., a five-story office building that was built a few years ago on the former Irvine campus of Washington Mutual Inc. That building totals about 151,000 square feet.
The private equity firm’s real estate subsidiaries sold off most of their local portfolio from 2006-07. They started eyeing acquisitions again in early 2010, Oaktree officials told the Business Journal last year.
Searching
Investors such as Hines and Oaktree have increasingly been looking to buy well-leased buildings that provide solid sources of cash flow, said Ryan Gallagher, senior managing director for the Irvine office of broker Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P.
Banks and other lenders are beginning to fund purchases of more stable asset deals such as Alton Corporate Plaza, said Gallagher, who represented Legacy Partners in the transaction with colleagues Kevin Mackenzie and Ryan Hertel.
Hines said last week that it has assumed property management responsibilities for the Alton Corporate Plaza on behalf of the joint venture.
