COMMERCIAL
San Diego-based real estate investor Westcore Properties has snapped up a San Juan Capistrano office complex that fell into bankruptcy last year and was turned over to its lenders a few months ago.
Westcore bought the Mammoth Professional Office Park, a two-building, 115,517-square-foot project that opened in late 2006. It sits on the hills overlooking the San Diego (I-5) Freeway and was built by Mammoth Equities LLC of Mission Viejo.
The office park, which is about 40% full and caters to smaller and mid-size tenants, is being renamed Westcore Executive Center, according to the buyer.
Terms of the bank-driven sale weren’t disclosed, but brokerages put the sale price at about $17 million. Mammoth Equities filed bankruptcy for the project in mid-2009.
The bankruptcy case was dismissed in late October and the property was foreclosed on by JP Morgan Chase & Co., according to court records.
Court records indicate that Mammoth had a deal to sell the smaller, 44,938-square-foot building at the complex to an undisclosed investor group for about $9.8 million, or about $218 per square foot, several months earlier.
Mammoth also had a $22 million offer for the entire property rejected by its main lender—which then was Washington Mutual—in 2008, according to court records.
Westcore said it plans to remodel the courtyard area at the complex. It will keep the mammoth sculptures that were put there by the project’s developers.
It’s the first office building in Orange County that Westcore owns. It also owns two local industrial complexes, including a 224,600-square-foot complex at the Commerce Centre in Buena Park that it bought earlier this year.
Westcore teamed up with Aliso Viejo’s CT Realty Investors and other partners to buy a 1.4 million-square-foot industrial site in San Bernardino this summer.
Westcore was represented by Dan Vittone, Al Pekarcik, Tony O’Neill and Kendrick Askew of Voit Real Estate Services in the San Juan Capistrano deal.
Virginia Bound
An apartment-focused real estate fund that began operations under the banner of Santa Ana’s Grubb & Ellis Co. appears to be moving its headquarters to Virginia.
Last month, I wrote about Grubb & Ellis Apartment REIT Inc., which has raised close to $200 million since 2006, making plans to become a self-managed entity.
The fund plans to change its name to Apartment Trust of America Inc. and is dropping its affiliation with Grubb & Ellis.
Now, it appears as though the fund, headed by Chairman and Chief Executive Stanley Olander, has plans to move to the East Coast. A registration statement filed by the company in late November has the fund’s headquarters listed as being in Richmond, Va.
A majority of the fund’s apartments are in Virginia, Texas and Georgia. It doesn’t own any apartments in California.
A similar breakup occurred about two years ago, when Healthcare Trust of America Inc., a healthcare-focused real estate fund that originally was known as Grubb & Ellis Healthcare REIT, went independent, changed its name and moved operations to Arizona.
Busy in Huntington Beach
Brokers at the Irvine office of Voit Real Estate Services have taken over the leasing assignment for the Towers at Bella Terra, a 382,000-square-foot office complex in Huntington Beach.
The complex includes a 193,000-square-foot, 12-story building and two 95,000-square-foot, six-story buildings. The buildings are next to the Shops at Bella Terra and the San Diego (I-405) Freeway.
Voit’s Chris Deason, John Harty, Michael Coppin, and Xavier Colombi have the listing for the three buildings.
RESIDENTIAL
Newport Beach’s Tri Pointe Homes LLC, a builder started by former executives of William Lyon Homes Inc. last year, has made a few hires.
The company said it has hired Jeff Logan as vice president of land acquisition. He’ll be responsible for finding land for future development as well as underwriting and negotiating all land acquisition activities.
TriPointe recently announced it raised $150 million from Greenwich, Conn.-based private equity investor Starwood Capital Group, which will be used to help the builder expand in California and other markets.
Logan counts 18 years of real estate experience, including stints at Florida’s LNR Property Corp. and New Jersey’s K. Hovnanian Homes.
TriPointe, which has four projects currently selling in Southern California, also named Steve Wolpin as its new vice president of sales and marketing.
Wolpin previously held similar positions with Meritage Homes, Lennar San Diego, and the Urban and Orange County Divisions of Lennar Homes.
