IRA Capital LLC, one of Orange County’s most active real estate investors the past few years, has returned to the healthcare property sector with its 2024 purchases.
The firm, behind several of the larger office buys in OC between 2021 and 2023, this month bought a 237,000-square-foot life science campus in Columbus, Ohio for $21.5 million.
The deal works out to about $91 per square foot.
The campus, a four-building complex at 3435 Stelzer Road sits about 2 miles from the Jack Nicklaus Freeway and less than 6 miles from John Glenn Columbus International Airport.
The building is largely leased by Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: SRPT), a Cambridge, Mass.-based biopharmaceutical firm valued at $12 billion as of last week.
It’s the Irvine-based commercial real estate investor’s second reported purchase this year; its first was a 21,900-square-foot medical office in Folsom. IRA paid $7.35 million for the property at 1730 Prairie City Road, just a mile from the El Dorado Freeway.
That deal worked out to about $335 per square foot.
IRA is reported to count a portfolio of over 8 million square feet; nearly 70% of that is comprised of healthcare and medical offices, with the balance made up of traditional office, retail and multifamily.
Non-Core Markets
“Columbus was not specifically on IRA’s radar as a biotech hub until the Stelzer Road opportunity came our way and we started digging in,” IRA Managing Partner Amer Kasm told the Business Journal, noting the region’s several gene therapy companies, including Andelyn Bioscience and Forge Biologics.
“We were super impressed by the cluster of life science companies which have spurred investment activity into the region’s ecosystem as evidenced by Ohio State University and Nationwide Children’s Hospital recently announcing their partnership in a new 270-acre, $1 billion-plus Innovation District, bringing together students, researchers, city leaders, Fortune 500 companies and new startups to spur growth in the STEM community.”
Unlike other healthcare real estate investors, which focus on core life science markets such as Cambridge, San Francisco and San Diego, “IRA has bucked the trend and acquired life science assets in other non-core markets,” such as Columbus, officials said.
The firm in 2017 acquired a 233,694-square-foot research campus leased by Pharmaceutical Product Development in Middleton, Wis., for $55 million, or for around $235 per square foot.
IRA four years later sold the complex in a portfolio deal with 32 other flex and office properties for over $620 million, or $531 per square foot.
“Life science companies with a presence in markets like Middleton and Columbus benefit from low operating costs and can leverage local fundamental drivers that generate efficiency,” Kasm said.
Moreover, other non-core life science markets—which aren’t as highly priced as their core counterparts—IRA has also identified as potential investment opportunities include Atlanta; Nashville, Tenn.; and Charlotte, N.C.
Selling Spree
Locally, IRA has been more active on the selling side since the start of the year.
The firm sold a trio of multifamily properties—all of which are located within a 5-mile radius of each other in Costa Mesa—for a combined $8.3 million, property records indicate.
