Harrison Street JV Buys Orange County Asset for MOB Conversion

Pacifica Court. Image courtesy of Meridian

Meridian and Harrison Street have purchased Pacifica Court, a 110,400-square-foot office building in Irvine, Calif., for $43 million, public records show. The partners plan to convert the asset into a Class A medical office building and rename it as Pacifica Medical Plaza. According to Yardi Matrix data, BlackRock sold the property after 14 years of ownership. CBRE negotiated the deal on behalf of the seller, while the joint venture was self-represented.

“Meridian identified a unique opportunity to convert a general office to medical office in one of the tightest medical office markets in Southern California. The market has extremely high barriers to entry due to lack of developable parcels as well as much of the existing product being controlled and governed by the Irvine Co.,” Meridian CEO John Pollock told Commercial Property Executive.

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Situated on 4.8 acres at 114 Pacifica Ct., the four-story building was completed in 1999 and features 28,200-square-foot floorplates and a parking ratio of 4 spaces per 1,000 square feet. The LEED Gold-certified property was 60 percent occupied at the time of sale, according to Meridian Vice President of Acquisitions R.J. Sommerdyke.

Upcoming improvements

Sommerdyke said in a prepared statement that Meridian intends to build a three-level parking structure on-site, which will bring the property’s parking ratio to 5.55 per 1,000 square feet. The new ownership will also renovate common areas and upgrade the building’s systems in order to accommodate medical office uses. Improvements are slated for completion in the third quarter of 2021. Colliers Senior Vice President John Wadsworth and First Vice President Aaron Phillips will handle leasing at the converted property.

Pacifica Court is 5 miles southeast of the city center in the Irvine Spectrum neighborhood, adjacent to Laguna Freeway and close to Interstate 5. Hoag Hospital Irvine and Kaiser Permanente Orange County – Irvine Medical Center are both 2 miles from the future medical office building.

CBRE Executive Vice Presidents Anthony DeLorenzo and Todd Tydlaska represented the seller in the transaction. Earlier this year, DeLorenzo was also part of the brokerage team assisting the seller in the $38.4 million disposition of a 56,809-square-foot medical office building in Santa Ana, Calif.