The University of California has bought an 8-story building near its UCI Medical Center campus in Orange, in one of the top area office sales since the onset of the pandemic.
The school’s Board of Regents recently completed the purchase of 3800 W. Chapman Ave., a 169,000-square-foot building on the periphery of the Outlets at Orange shopping center.
The office is located on the northern edge of the Outlets, between UCI Medical Center and the Christ Cathedral campus.
The building traded for $45.1 million, or about $266 per square foot, according to property records. It’s currently leased to a mix of tenants, according to brokerage data.
The office was sold by a venture between Bloomfield, Conn.-based healthcare insurance company Cigna Corp. and Irvine’s Greenlaw Partners; the venture owns other offices and excess land around the Outlets at Orange mall.
The Cigna-Greenlaw partnership had owned the 3800 W. Chapman building since 2016; Greenlaw had a stake in the building for a few additional years prior, with a different investment partner.
Greenlaw has worked with the city of Orange to get entitlements for 277 apartments on 5.7 acres of land surrounding the just-sold office that’s now used as surface parking. It’s part of a larger collection of apartments proposed for land that the developer owns around the Outlets.
It’s not known whether the office sale to the UC system will impact that project.
UCI Offices Nearby
Plans for the building also have not been disclosed by the UC system; which alluded to an area office buy in the agenda for a recent closed-door regent’s board meeting, as part of an expansion for its Irvine campus, which includes the Orange medical facilities.
Based on the proximity to other facilities, it appears likely to be used in conjunction with the nearby medical center, which is located on about eight acres.
The school also owns the next-door 200 S. Manchester Ave. office, another 8-story building totaling some 146,300 square feet.
That office, known as the UCI Health Manchester Pavilion, is used for physical therapy and speech therapy, among other services.
The deal was brokered by the local office of Newmark; officials there declined to comment on the transaction.
The building at 3800 Chapman W. Ave. was built in 1984 and last renovated in 2016. It’s currently home to several tenants, including Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory and Sedgwick Claims Management.
Expanding Portfolio
Though much of the University of California’s local real estate portfolio is centered in Irvine near the school’s main 1,500-acre campus, UCI Health has a sizeable presence in Orange, where much of its healthcare hub, and main hospital, are based.
Expansion at Irvine has been a focus in 2020.
In a recent development for UCI’s healthcare efforts closer to its main campus, the university announced plans this summer to build a $221 million, five-story outpatient pavilion on the north side of its Irvine campus.
The 168,000-square-foot UCI Health Center for Advanced Care, to be built on land the school owns at the corner of Jamboree Road and Birch Street, will offer services in child health, adult specialty care, urgent care and other services once it opens in 2022, officials said in August.
Prior to that, the university broke ground in February on the Susan and Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences and continues to expand its community health services with new clinics and outpatient centers.
A new hospital and surgery center in Irvine—a mission the university set out to achieve in the 1970s—could be next, officials previously noted. Additional land UCI owns on the south side of Jamboree Road is being eyed for that project.
