Ingram Micro Inc., Orange County’s largest company by sales, is expected to move its headquarters from Santa Ana to Irvine after signing a large office lease at the Park Place mixed-use campus.
The company recently inked a nearly 175,000-square-foot lease at the low-rise portion of the Park Place offices, which are owned by Irvine-based LBA Realty.
The deal, one of the largest local office leases in the past 12 months or so, runs for more than 10 years and begins this summer, according to real estate sources.
Ingram Micro occupies about 192,000 square feet at its headquarters, which is just off the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway on St. Andrew Place.
1,000 Workers
The company employs about 1,000 people in Santa Ana, according to Business Journal records. It was one of the five largest employers there as of 2010, according to the most recent data available from the city.
The company sold its Santa Ana headquarters, as well as an adjacent building that totals nearly 204,000 square feet and is partly leased to other tenants, in the late 1990s.
A sale of the Santa Ana offices that the company leases are expected later this year following Ingram Micro’s departure, according to real estate sources.
The two buildings in Santa Ana have an assessed value of nearly $65 million, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
Company executives last week declined to comment on the lease transaction and Ingram’s plans in Santa Ana. A formal announcement on its plans could come in a few weeks, they said.
Ingram has recently been in a selling mode for some facilities it owns outside OC.
Last month it sold two logistics distribution properties it owned in Plainfield, Ind., along with 29 acres of excess land, to Toronto-based real estate investor Granite Real Estate Investment Trust.
That sale totaled nearly $68.8 million and included 1 million square feet of existing industrial space.
The Indiana properties made up one of the two largest distribution centers Ingram had owned, sharing the distinction with a facility in Germany, according to the company’s last annual report.
Ingram leases “substantially all” of the company’s nearly 130 distribution facilities worldwide, the company said in the report.
Thin Margins
It will lease back the Indiana facilities for 10 years, according to Granite Real Estate Trust.
Ingram Micro is the world’s largest distributor of computers, software and other technology products, with sprawling operations around the globe. It has a market value of nearly $4 billion.
It had $42.6 billion in revenue in 2013, by far the most sales of any local company.
It relies on thousands of resellers to sell goods and services and traditionally has operated under razor-thin margins.
Chief Executive Alain Monie, who took over the top spot at the company in early 2012, has been pushing Ingram Micro into higher-margin business lines.
LBA Leasing
The lease is the latest in a string of blockbuster deals struck at Park Place by LBA, which acquired a majority of the nearly 105-acre campus in a series of transactions in 2009 and 2010.
LBA landed Western Digital Corp. as an anchor tenant for the low-rise office portion of the campus in a 2009 deal that has since been expanded to about 470,000 square feet. The disk drive maker moved its headquarters from Lake Forest to Irvine as part of the relocation.
St. Joseph Health took over another 200,000 square feet at the low-rise portion of the office complex in a 2012 lease.
Houzz
Other large tenants taking space in LBA’s buildings at Park Place include Palo Alto-based Houzz, an online home-remodeling and design company. The company recently added another 50,000 square feet to its Irvine operations and now leases close to 100,000 square feet there.
The deal with Ingram Micro brings occupancy at LBA’s Park Place offices to more than 95%, according to brokerage data.
