Real estate developer and investor Hines Interests LP has bought a pair of low-rise buildings in Irvine near the District at Tustin Legacy shopping center and plans to combine it and another nearby property it owns into a single office campus.
Houston-based Hines partnered with Los Angeles private equity firm Oaktree Capital Management LP to buy Bay Technology Center, a two-building, multitenant office campus in Irvine.
The buildings, which total about 110,600 square feet, traded hands for about $11.2 million, or about $101 per square foot. The deal closed late last month, according to brokerage data.
Los Angeles-based Arden Realty Inc. sold the complex, which is about 15% leased.
The Bay Technology property is at 16800 and 16802 Aston St., between Red Hill Avenue and Von Karman Avenue. The site is a few blocks from the southwestern edge of the Tustin Legacy development site.
The Bay Technology sale comes about a year after Hines and Oaktree paid about $32.4 million for Alton Corporate Plaza, a two-building office park totaling 205,000 square feet that’s on the same block as the latest purchase.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is the largest tenant at the largely full Alton Corporate Plaza, and recently renewed its lease for the site under a short-term deal. Other tenants include Source Interlink Magazine and Nexus IS Inc.
The Irvine office of Hines plans to redevelop and rebrand the two low-rise properties it owns into a single, 320,000-square-foot campus, which will operate under the Alton Corporate Plaza name.
The space is expected to appeal to corporate users looking for space running 100,000 square feet or more. Wade Clark and Joe Bevan, brokers with the Irvine office of Jones Lane La Salle, will be handling leasing for the combined property.
Demolition work for some of the vacant interior space at the Aston Street buildings is expected to begin as early as this week.
The new owners also are looking into design plans for better connecting the two sets of offices. A time frame for the project’s redevelopment hasn’t been disclosed.
Arden was represented in the sale by Bob Smith, Paul Jones and Karen Scholte, from the Newport Beach office of brokerage CBRE Group Inc.
The deal “was a unique opportunity given the lack of available value-add product in Orange County over the last several months,” Jones said.
The deal is the ninth purchase for Hines in OC over the past six years. It’s also the third acquisition the company, which counts an Irvine office, has made in a venture with Oaktree.
Redevelopment Hub
A number of low-rise office and industrial buildings near the latest Hines purchase are starting to move ahead on their own redevelopment plans.
Less than a mile away from the Bay Technology site, Irvine-based Pacific Dental Services Inc. is in the early stages of converting a nearly 140,000-square-foot industrial building on Red Hill Avenue into a new headquarters.
Pacific Dental, OC’s 27th-largest private company by revenue, recently paid about $13.6 million for the building at 17000 Red Hill, which previously was used by an electronics and communication unit of defense and aerospace manufacturer Rockwell Collins.
At the intersection of Red Hill Avenue and Barranca Parkway, Newport Beach-based Western Realco LLC owns a 13-acre industrial property that it bought last year for a little more than $19 million.
The property includes a 183,000-square-foot building that is expected to be renovated next year, along with an empty 3.5-acre site that could hold an additional 80,000-square-foot building.
A few blocks from the Hines buildings, at 16752 Armstrong, a nearly $10 million renovation is planned to turn an older building into the local design and sales offices for motocross brand Fox Head Inc.
Not all redevelopment plans in the area involve office uses. Irvine city records show plans being filed recently to turn another Armstrong Avenue office property near the Fox Head site into a 334-unit residential project.
