Four local buildings that previously served as stores for now-gone retailer Mervyns are up for sale as part of a sizeable court-overseen property sale.
Irvine’s Faris Lee Investments, one of the country’s larger brokerages for retail real estate, recently began marketing a portfolio of 13 former Mervyns stores in Southern California and Arizona totaling more than 1 million square feet.
Four of those buildings are in Orange County. The buildings, in Garden Grove, Anaheim, Fullerton and Foothill Ranch, take up about 320,000 square feet of space.
The Garden Grove building, an 83,731-square-foot store on Harbor Boulevard, was converted to a Burlington Coat Factory last September.
The other three OC locations are empty.
In all, nine of the 13 buildings in the portfolio are vacant. One site in Palmdale has been converted to a Forever 21. Others were remade into Burlington Coat Factory stores.
“As an investment, it’s a great opportunity to acquire a long-term (property) in an excellent retail location, and the vacant sites are very attractive to either users or value-added investors,” said Faris Lee President Richard Walter.
A sale price for the portfolio hasn’t been disclosed by the brokerage.
Officials expect private market, “passive” investors to bid on the leased buildings, and for “sophisticated” developers to bid on the empty ones.
Other lender-driven sales of empty buildings in the area that once were Mervyns—including an October sale in Laguna Niguel—have traded hands at prices close to $100 per square foot, according to brokerage data.
The 2008 bankruptcy and subsequent liquidation of Mervyns continues to have repercussions in the area’s commercial real estate market.
A number of locations have been turned into retailers such as Kohl’s and Forever 21, while a few sites in the area have been reconfigured into upscale gyms.
This latest assignment comes as Faris Lee is beefing up its own management team. The brokerage, which late last year opened offices in Las Vegas and Phoenix, recently added Richard Chichester as chief operating officer.
Chichester formerly was president of North America operations for brokerage Colliers International, and more recently was a cofounder of Irvine’s Attentus Advisors, a business consulting firm.
Faris Lee’s Walter and Senior Managing Director Donald MacLellan are overseeing the portfolio assignment and also handling marketing for the nine Southern California properties.
David Wetta and Joe Compagno, managing directors in Faris Lee’s Phoenix office, are leading marketing efforts for the four Arizona properties.
Legal Lease
Law firm Wolfe & Wyman LLP is relocating its Irvine offices.
The civil litigation firm said it leased the 20,270-square-foot third floor at 2301 Dupont Drive, a five-story building a few blocks from John Wayne Airport just off Von Karman Avenue.
Wolfe & Wyman plans to move into its new offices in May, and has arranged to have its name on top of the building, which is owned by Newport Beach’s KBS Realty Advisors.
The firm had been at Irvine’s Park Plaza office for the past seven years. The deal’s an expansion of about 5,000 square feet for the firm, which counts about 40 lawyers and other staff in its Irvine office.
The law firm was represented in the 10-year lease by Royce Sharf, Michael Props, and Paul Jones, brokers with the Irvine office of tenant advisory firm Studley Inc.
KBS, which bought the 98,000-square-foot building and another 153,000-square-foot office next door for $80.1 million in 2008, was represented by Jeff Morgan and John Weiner with the Newport Beach office of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.
Andy Bernstein of Jackson DeMarco Tidus Peckenpaugh was the real estate attorney for the tenant, and Jay Ryan of Holland & Knight acted as the real estate lawyer for the landlord.
McMonigle Goes Global
Luxury home broker John McMonigle is going international—for clients.
Newport Beach’s McMonigle Group Inc. said this month it’s launching a group focusing on “international clientele in both the sale and purchase of properties in Southern California.”
The group, called McMonigle International, is being headed by President Lili Kung Peters.
The softening local real estate market has resulted in more interest from potential foreign buyers of late, the brokerage said.
