The Newport Beach landlord, which counts an office portfolio in excess of 53 million square feet, is reported to have struck a blockbuster deal for one of its new office campuses in Silicon Valley, adding to a leasing spree for Orange County’s largest real estate owner over the past year.
Reports indicate Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) inked a 701,000-square-foot lease last month at the Pathline Park office complex, a 1.3 million-square-foot campus Irvine Co. is developing in Sunnyvale.
The six-building deal is tops for the tech-focused South Bay region since the onset of the pandemic, and brings Irvine Co.’s campus to full occupancy ahead of its delivery, local reports indicate.
Pathline Park
The developer began construction on the 11-building office park in 2018 and is now nearing completion; initial projections called for a 2021 delivery for most of the buildings at the complex.
The campus is designed by Arquitectonica and includes floor-to-ceiling glass and indoor outdoor connectivity with 20% of the 42-acre site dedicated to open space.
Five of the buildings reportedly leased by Apple are completed.
Irvine Co. officials declined to comment on the reported deal, which is the largest for the region since early 2020 when Google leased nearly 500,000 square feet elsewhere in Sunnyvale, according to local reports.
CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield brokered the deal on behalf of Irvine Co.
Pathline Park is about 4 miles from Apple Park, the 175-acre main campus for Apple. That spaceship-looking facility runs about 2.8 million square feet.
No. 1 in OC
Pathline Park has three tenants in total; two of them were secured in the pre-leasing phase in 2018.
Software firm Synopsys, which is based in Mountain View and has local offices in Irvine, leased 360,000 square feet across three buildings as part of the development’s first phase.
Cybersecurity firm Proofpoint also inked a 242,000-square-foot lease at the campus.
Together with Apple’s recent 700,000-square-foot deal, the campus is at full occupancy ahead of its completion.
The complex is comparable in size to the developer’s Spectrum Terrace in Irvine, which will total 1.1 million square feet at full buildout. Two of the three planned phases there have delivered, totaling nearly 700,000 square feet.
Irvine Co. ranks No. 1 on this week’s list of the largest commercial developers in OC, due to its work at the second phase of Spectrum Terrace, and the new Innovation Office Park in Irvine.
OC’s Blockbuster Deal
The Apple deal is the largest tech-related office deal reported in the state over the past year, edging out a deal in OC.
Anduril Industries announced in March a deal to occupy all of The Press development at the former LA Times printing facility in Costa Mesa.
That lease is for 640,000 square feet, including 450,000 square feet that’s currently under construction, as well as a newly planned 190,000-square-foot research and development building.
Anduril, a tech-focused defense and border protection company founded by Palmer Luckey, is expected to move from its current office in Irvine to the project by summer 2022.
Leasing Spree
Irvine Co. has managed to maintain strong leasing volume in the past year.
The area’s largest landlord said last month it leased nearly 7 million square feet across its office portfolio between April 2020 and March 2021; 2 million of that total was inked in February and March 2021 alone.
The recent Apple deal, along with potential other leases signed in the past two months, would bring the leasing volume closer to 8 million square feet.
The landlord’s largest reported local deal this year is for a full building at Spectrum Terrace where real estate data firm CoStar Group Inc. inked a 115,000-square-foot lease.
Expect new deals to be made over the next year at Spectrum Terrace’s third phase, which will add three more mid-rise offices and other buildings, as well as at the company’s just-built Innovation Office Park, a collection of low-rise buildings in Irvine near the intersection of the Santa Ana (5) Freeway and Sand Canyon Avenue.
