As Orange County continues its recovery from the impacts of the global COVID pandemic, some property owners are looking to sell their assets in order to test the market for possible redevelopment opportunities. In one example, a 125,043-square-foot multi-tenant office building known as Park Center 400 has been put up for sale in Santa Ana. The 4-story property is located on 4.9 acres of land at 400 North Tustin Avenue and is offered for an undisclosed price. The owner is a Santa Ana entity associated with David V. Whiting and Raymond M. Benford.
The low-rise Class B building with surface parking area includes up to 37,000 square feet of fully usable medical office space and is conveniently located in the up-and-coming Parkcenter submarket in central Orange County, according to the property marketing materials. It further has close proximity to the US Interstate 5, and State Routes 55 and 22 and presents an opportune location for potential new tenants seeking to draw employees commuting from a wide radius of neighborhoods in the surrounding area.
The property is exclusively offered for sale by two office specialists, Jaimeson Hearne and Marshal Vogt, both principals at the Orange, Calif. office of Lee & Associates.
The seller also owns a 5,184-square-foot adjoining property consisting of a single story building on nearly an acre of land and would consider selling both properties at the same time, according to the property flyer. This property is located at 2201 East 4th Street and is 100 percent leased to a single tenant. This additional property would give the potential buyer the entire block along East 4th Street from North Tustin Avenue to North Parkcenter Drive as well as supplemental income while the properties go through the entitlement process. Furthermore, the 2201 East 4th Street site is within Santa Ana’s Village Center District residential overlay, which provides a future investor the possibility to re-entitle the site to a high-density apartment property.
According to the Fourth Quarter of 2022 Kidder Mathews Orange County Office Market Report, since the beginning of 2021, the Orange County office inventory has seen a variety of portfolios sold as part of redevelopment initiatives into other property types. The area has also seen the pace of new lease activity rise steadily as businesses switch from remote to hybrid work schedules, with many tenants looking for high-end office property in convenient locations near amenities. In this time period, the 4.3 million square feet of sublease space that has filled the market has allowed businesses to lease at a reasonable price.
Most importantly, Kidder shows that the adjusted unemployment rate in Orange County was 3 percent, which has gone down from the 4.1 percent rate the previous year, and Education and Health Services have achieved the second-highest employment gain with 17,600 new jobs during that period.
