A high-profile intersection at the Newport Beach-Irvine city line is being eyed as the site of a midsize office development—assuming occupants or a buyer for the buildings can first be found.
Brokers with Irvine’s 360 Commercial Partners have begun marketing plans for Newport Business Plaza, a three-building office project planned at Jamboree Road and Campus Drive.
The project is slated to total about 46,000 square feet, about the amount of space on two floors in one of the area’s larger office towers.
Despite its relatively modest size, it would still be the largest Newport Beach office to go up in the city’s high-profile business district near John Wayne Airport in years.
Other commercial development in that part of Newport Beach has crawled to a near-halt lately, due in part to concerns about the economy and the city’s stringent Greenlight initiative, which limits the amount of new construction in the city.
The Newport Business Plaza’s plans have already been approved by the city, making ground breaking now largely contingent on finding occupants for the project, said Steven Economos, director of 360 Commercial’s office advisory group. He and colleague Geoffrey DeWolf have the listing for the project.
Early plans for Newport Business Plaza, designed by Irvine-based architecture firm Ware Malcomb, call for a pair of three-story offices connected by a low-rise building that could serve as a bank branch or similar use.
The property also could be designed for a single user, Economos said.
The project would replace a single-story, 10,200-square-foot building at 5190 Campus Drive that was built in 1980 as part of the Koll Center Newport office campus.
The existing building was once used by Far East National Bank as a branch.
Sale Preferred
The project’s developers would prefer to sell a majority of the property to one or more owner-users before breaking ground.
Leasing the building in advance of construction also is a possibility, Economos said.
Pricing is still being figured out for Newport Business Plaza. While the project is within a stone’s throw of several offices that have an Irvine address, any sale is likely to trade at prices comparable to other high-end Newport Beach offices sold in the past few years, Economos said.
Recent Action
On the high end of prices seen for existing smaller and midsize office buildings in the city, a family trust tied to Newport Beach’s Burnham USA Equities Inc. paid close to $520 per square foot for a pair of buildings totaling about 23,000 square feet last year.
Among more affordable local deals, outlet mall developer Craig Realty Group paid close to $13 million, or about $300 per square foot, in 2009 for a 44,811-square-foot building on MacArthur Boulevard that now serves as its headquarters.
Craig’s building was previously owned and used by developer and hotel owner Makar Properties LLC as its headquarters.
WPI Newport LLC, a unit of Santa Ana’s World Premier Investments, is listed as the property owner of the site at Jamboree and Campus, according to Washington, D.C.-based CoStar Group Inc.
Also said to have a stake in the property is Newport Beach’s United American Properties, another privately held real estate owner.
Partnership
WPI and United American have partnered to buy more than 1 million square feet of retail properties across the U.S., according to reports.
Newport Business Plaza is on the opposite corner of Jamboree and Campus as the three-building Plaza-Irvine residential condominium tower.
It’s one of several office projects that could be built along the heavily travelled Jamboree Road corridor over the next few years—if market conditions warrant.
A few blocks closer to the San Diego (405) Freeway in Irvine, Houston’s Hines Interests LP is planning a mostly midrise office campus called California Green.
Green Play
That project, located between Michelson Drive and Dupont Drive, tentatively calls for 785,000 square feet of space built to high environmental standards. A time frame for that project largely depends on tenant de-mand.
The last Newport Beach office building to be built in the airport area was a 23,435-square-foot facility on Dove Street built by Santa Ana’s Far West Industries Inc.
That building was completed early last year and now is about 80% leased, according to brokerage data.
