Kulicke & Soffa Industries Inc., a Singapore-based maker of semiconductor assembly equipment, is moving its West Coast operations from Irvine to a nearby office in Santa Ana that saw a change in ownership last year.
The company said this month that it plans to relocate its regional headquarters to Irvine Corporate Center, a 126,633-square-foot office at 1821 E. Dyer Road.
The two-story building, about a block from the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway, has a Santa Ana address but is considered to be part of the Irvine Business Complex, the largely commercial area surrounding John Wayne Airport.
Kulicke & Soffa will lease 66,538 square feet of space at the East Dyer building, according to brokers with the Irvine office of Jones Lang LaSalle who represented the building’s landlord, a joint venture between Houston-based Hines Interests LP and Oaktree Capital Management LP of L.A.
Hines and Oaktree paid a reported $8.4 million for the building late last year.
Earlier in 2012, the building saw the departure of its largest tenant, Westcliff Medical Laboratories, a unit of Burlington, N.C.-based Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings.
Westcliff vacated about 66,000 square feet of space in the building in mid-2012 and moved much of its local operations to San Diego.
Kulicke & Soffa’s new lease at Irvine Corporate Center largely fills up the space left behind by Westcliff.
The Santa Ana building—which includes office, laboratory and manufacturing space—has gotten an extensive remodeling since the change in ownership, according to Jones Lang LaSalle’s Joe Bevan, who along with colleague Wade Clark represented Hines and Oaktree in the lease.
Ken Ward and Dillon Dummit of Cresa Orange County’s Newport Beach office represented Kulicke & Soffa, which will relocate its local offices from 16700 Red Hill Ave., a 183,000-square-foot Irvine property long known as the Orthodyne Electronics Building.
Kulicke & Soffa took over the Irvine building when it bought the assets of Irvine-based Orthodyne Electronics Corp. in 2008 for about $125 million and other incentives.
Orthodyne made wedge bonders used to connect small wires to semiconductors. It had nearly 300 employees at the time of its sale.
Kulicke & Soffa announced in 2010 that it was shifting most of the manufacturing done at the Irvine plant to Malaysia and Singapore, leaving about 150 engineering, marketing and sales and other jobs in OC.
The Red Hill property was sold in 2011 for a reported $19 million to Newport Beach-based developer Western Realco.
Western Realco said last year that it planned to renovate the building and put it up for sale after existing tenants’ leases expire.
It’s also looking to build two industrial buildings totaling about 80,000 square feet on an additional 3.5 acres of empty land at the Irvine site.
Appraisal Combo
A Fullerton-based appraisal firm has joined with 41 similar companies across the country to make one of the appraisal industry’s largest combined companies.
Penner & Associates Inc. announced last month that it was combining with 41 other appraisal firms to form Naples, Fla.-based Valbridge Property Advisors, which provides independent valuation and advisory services.
The combined company counts 145 MAI-designated appraisers and 600 staff members. Valbridge officials estimated that the company now ranks among the top three commercial real estate valuation and advisory services in the country.
Fullerton-based Penner & Associates is one of four California companies that are part of Valbridge, along with offices in Pasadena, San Jose and Sacramento. The company was founded in 1991 by John Penner, and it provides valuation and consulting for commercial real estate, with a specialty in office, medical and industrial properties.
John Penner now is a senior managing director of Valbridge and also one of nine founding board of director members for the combined company.
Apartment Buy
An investment fund run by Irvine-based Steadfast Cos. has paid $61 million to buy apartment complexes in Oklahoma City and Texas in separate transactions.
The company’s Steadfast Income REIT Inc. paid $38.2 million for a 294-unit Oklahoma City complex known as the Deep Deuce at Bricktown apartments, and another $23 million for a 264-unit complex in Buda, Texas, known as Vantage at Buda.
The investment fund now owns 34 apartment complexes in 10 Midwestern and Southern states, including six in Texas and five in Oklahoma.
Among other recent deals, Steadfast last month paid $12.8 million for a 118-unit apartment complex in downtown Kansas City, Mo., its second buy there.
