Orange County Office Asset Commands $103M

2722 Michelson. Photo courtesy of IRA Capital

IRA Capital is continuing to invest heavily into its West Coast holdings. The local private equity firm has acquired a fully leased office property in Irvine, Calif., for $103 million. LBA Realty sold the building, CommercialEdge data shows.

LBA Realty became the owner of the property in 2017. Originally an industrial building constructed in 1977, the property formerly served as headquarters for St. John Knits. After a $30 million investment, the asset was fully repositioned in 2019 as a Class A office property totaling 155,000 square feet.

Located at 2722 Michelson Drive on a 9-acre lot, the single-floor building features 24-foot ceilings and an open plan which aims to encourage collaboration. Amenities include several meeting spaces, a fitness center, kitchen with cafeteria, as well as EV charging stations and a parking ratio of 4 spaces per 1,000 square feet. Defense contractor Anduril Industries has been the sole tenant of the building since 2019.

READ ALSO: Top 5 Industrial Markets for Construction Activity

The building is in the vicinity of John Wayne Airport, as well as several major transportation routes—Interstate 405 and state routes 55 and 63. Corporate neighbors within the Irvine Business Complex include Western Digital, Ingram Micro, Alteryx, Allergan, among other pharmaceutical and technology companies.

IRA Capital completed several large deals in recent months. In October, it acquired a Beverly Hills office property—also recently renovated—for $153 million from a partnership of Worthe Real Estate Group and Invesco. In August, the private equity firm closed a $620 million portfolio sale to Nuveen and NexCore, consisting of 1.2 million square feet of healthcare and life science assets.

Office vacancies in Orange County reached 14 percent in November, according to CommercialEdge. Within the Irvine Business Complex, the rate was at 17 percent. Orange County currently has 1.5 million square feet of office space underway. Some of the largest developments include Irvine Co.’s final phase of Spectrum Terrace—a 1.1 million-square-foot office campus—and Invesco Real Estate’s 431,765-square-foot creative office in Costa Mesa.