Orange County’s top commercial real estate developers posted their most active year of completed projects in a decade with a variety of sizeable product types opening across the region over the year ended April 30.
The county’s 20 largest office, industrial, retail and hotel developers completed a little more than 3 million square feet worth of projects here over the year, based on this week’s Business Journal list.
It was the most new development to open here since 2007, when nearly 7.8 million square feet worth of projects wrapped up.
This week’s total represents a nearly 50% increase over last year’s finished work and marks the fourth straight year that the combined square footage of new local projects represented by companies on the list increased.
Each of the entries on the list completed a unique project larger than 50,000 square feet during the year, perhaps the biggest sign that a local commercial building boom is under way.
It’s the first time since the recession that more than 10 developers on the annual list completed a project larger than 50,000 square feet.
Data used to compile the list are from company submissions, CoStar Group Inc. records and Business Journal research.
The list, in addition to ground-up development, includes developers with substantial redevelopment projects completed or in the works—to better reflect the growing trend of creative-reuse projects being done primarily for office and retail uses.
Irvine Co. Tops
Newport Beach-based Irvine Company took top marks on the list after building OC’s tallest office building.
The real estate giant’s 200 Spectrum Center tower opened in March in the Irvine Spectrum. The 425,000-square-foot, 21-story speculative office development was about 60% leased early last month.
Notable tenants that signed up to take space at the glass-sheathed building include Mazda North American Operations, which will have its headquarters at the building; Irvine-based smart-technology company Greenwave Systems Inc.; and WeWork, a New York-based provider of office space to entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses.
Irvine Co. also added a variety of retail buildings to its local portfolio during the year, headlined by an addition to its Los Olivos shopping center in the Spectrum that opened in March and is anchored by the first Whole Foods in Irvine.
The additions pushed Irvine Co.’s cumulative development to 545,000 square feet during the year, on top of 1.3 million square feet of office space it opened here in the past two years.
The company, OC’s dominant real estate owner, has close to another million square feet of high-rise and campus-style office projects in the works in Irvine, including a sister tower to 200 Spectrum Center that’s on track to be finished next year.
Irvine’s multiyear stretch as the county’s fastest growing city isn’t as pronounced in the top ranks of this year’s developer list as might be expected, outside of 200 Spectrum Center. Anaheim, Brea and Huntington Beach were home to eight of the 10 largest ground-up developments by square footage that are represented on the list, thanks to a number of new industrial, hotel and retail projects.
Newport Beach-based Panattoni Development Co. took the No. 2 spot after completing work at its multibuilding Anaheim Concourse project on land that once served as a campus for aerospace giant Boeing Co.
The developer completed more than 400,000 square feet of for-sale and for-lease industrial space at the project last year after building nearly 889,000 square feet the prior year.
Other industrial developers with sizeable projects that wrapped up during the year include Long Beach-based Pacific Industrial, No. 3, with 367,194 square feet completed, and Newport Beach-based Western Realco, No. 4, with 358,123 square feet.
Both companies had major projects that opened in Brea.
Hotel development was the largest source of ground-up development in OC last year by project count. Eight hotel projects and 10 developers, two of the projects with co-developers, are represented on the list. Five of the hotels were within a short distance of Disneyland Resort in Anaheim (see story, page 1).
Retail Rebound
A pair of large oceanfront shopping centers on opposite ends of the county that were more than a decade in the making also opened during the year.
Newport Beach-based Craig Realty Group finished the first, 325,000-square-foot phase of its Outlets at San Clemente project, which is part of the city’s new Marblehead Coastal development along the San Diego (I-5) Freeway. The project gave Craig Realty the No. 5 spot on the list.
San Jose-based DJM Capital Partners Inc. took the No. 9 spot after opening the 191,000-square-foot Pacific City center on Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach.
The developments, which are still leasing out, are the first retail projects topping 150,000 square feet to open in OC in close to eight years.
