The 2030 Main Street office tower in Irvine is on the market for sale and looks likely to be Orange County’s first building to trade hands for more than $100 million this year.
The 16-floor building, part of the 48-acre Irvine Concourse Corporate Center near John Wayne Airport, went up for sale this month, according to marketing materials for it.
An asking price for the 355,360-square-foot office wasn’t disclosed. Real estate sources estimate it could sell for about $120 million, or roughly $340 per square foot.
Calls to the local office of CBRE Group Inc., whose brokers have the listing for the building, weren’t returned. A time frame for the sale’s completion hasn’t been disclosed.
The building is currently owned by an affiliate of the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, which bought it in 1998 for $88.5 million, according to brokerage data.
Wells Fargo leases about 27% of the building and has its name atop the office, which is reported to be 89% leased.
Other large tenants include a pair of law firms: Jackson DeMarco Tidus Peckenpaugh, which leases about 45,000 square feet, and Grant, Genovese & Baratta LLP, which occupies another 21,000 square feet. Accounting firm Moss Adams LLP leases nearly 28,000 square feet.
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2030 Main is one of four similarly designed towers at the Irvine Concourse office campus, which overlooks the San Diego (405) Freeway between Von Karman Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard.
Each of the buildings, which combine for about 1.2 million square feet of office space, currently has a different owner.
An affiliate of Parsippany, N.J.-based Prudential Real Estate Investors owns the 2020 Main office, while Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear LLP, OC’s largest law firm by lawyer count, owns the 2040 Main building.
The law firm occupies more than 40% of the 2040 Main building and leases out the remainder of the space.
An affiliate of Boston-based AEW Capital Management LP bought the newest of the four buildings, the 314,027-square-foot 2050 Main office tower, in late 2011 for $108.5 million. That deal was OC’s largest single-building office transaction in 2011.
Climate Bodes Well
Real estate sources say the improving economy and local office market are expected to help 2030 Main get a higher price than the 2011 deal. The building is about 41,000 square feet larger than the 6-year-old 2050 Main building.
Also in the seller’s favor: the lack of higher-end airport-area offices listed for sale of late.
Last summer’s $277 million blockbuster sale of Park Place’s 3161 Michelson tower set several local marks for office sales, but there have been few other large buildings in the area listed for sale.
The biggest other airport-area office deal in the works is believed to be for a portfolio of eight small- and midsize properties in Irvine and Newport Beach, a collection currently owned by New York-based insurer American International Group Inc.
AIG paid a combined $175 million for the eight buildings and a three-building office complex in Seal Beach in a foreclosure-driven deal in 2011.
It, in turn, sold the 297,241-square-foot Seal Beach property, known as the Bixby Office Park, to San Diego-based Parallel Capital Partners Inc. for $85 million in February.
That’s the priciest office deal reported in OC so far this year.
The remaining eight properties, which include 1201 Dove St. office and Redstone Plaza in Newport Beach, as well as the nearby Newport Summit complex in Irvine, total about 515,000 square feet, according to brokerage data.
Numerous real estate sources have cited New York-based private equity giant Blackstone Group LP as the most likely buyer of AIG’s remaining eight airport-area buildings. A time frame for the sale and a purchase price for that transaction haven’t been disclosed.
