Kingsbarn JV Pays $64M for Orange County Office Campus

24411 Ridge Route Drive

A recently renovated creative office campus in South Orange County has changed hands. Kingsbarn Realty Capital and The Kelemen Co. have acquired HERE, a five-building, 223,974-square-foot property in Laguna Hills, Calif., for $63.8 million. The joint venture of Cigna Realty Investors and Cruzan sold the asset with the assistance of Newmark.

CommercialEdge data shows this was Kingsbarn’s sixth office acquisition in Orange County. In March, the Las Vegas-based firm purchased its fifth property in the market, paying $32 million for Stadium Crossings, a four-story, Class A building totaling 106,068 square feet in Anaheim, Calif.

A creative office campus

HERE’s buildings came online between 1988 and 1989 at 24411 and 24461 Ridge Route Drive, 23422, 23382 and 23332 Mill Creek Drive. The campus previously traded in 2015 for $46 million, CommercialEdge data shows.

The property underwent major capital improvements between 2015 and 2017, being repositioned as creative office space. Tenant amenities include a conference center, outdoor lounge and fitness area with showers and lockers, along with open-air patios. The campus features a parking ratio of four spaces per 1,000 square feet.

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HERE was 84 percent leased at the time of sale. Tenants include Cisco Systems, Quest Software, Braille Institute and Markham Financial, among many others.

The property is roughly 6 miles from central Irvine and within a short distance of Interstate 5. The immediate area has various retail, shopping and dining venues, including the Moulton Plaza mall.

Newmark Co-Head of U.S. Capital Markets Kevin Shannon and Director Brandon White, together with Executive Managing Directors Paul Jones and Brunson Howard, represented the sellers. Jones said, in a prepared statement, the fully repositioned campus offers the buyer optionality for its business plans, including pushing creative office rents, selling the individual buildings or even redeveloping the property into multifamily.

Orange County office space, at high value

As the hybrid work model continues to gain popularity, office properties in less dense urban areas, closer to housing, tend to be favored. Year-to-date through September, office sales in Orange County amounted to $1.2 billion, just slightly below the $1.3 billion that was recorded over the same period of last year, according to CommericalEdge data.

However, the amount of traded space shows office properties are getting more expensive—a total of 3.4 million square feet changed hands this year so far in Orange County, compared to last year’s 4.1 million square feet.