Irvine Company sold its last downtown San Diego office tower at a loss.
The company, owned by the country’s richest developer Donald Bren, sold One American Plaza, a 34-story building at 600 West Broadway, for $120 million. John and his daughter Payton Saca are the buyers.
The Southern California behemoth paid about $300 million for the 650,000-square-foot property almost two decades ago, the Orange County Business Journal reported then. Irvine Company did not comment on the deal.
Carolwood Estates’ Mick Partridge represented the buyers; Eastdil Secured’s Adam Edwards represented the seller.
The two parties were involved in another deal in November last year, when John Saca’s Saca Development purchased Irvine Company’s 101 West Broadway for about $44 million, less than a third of the $148.5 million Bren’s company paid for the tower in 2005.
A month later, Irvine Company sold offices at 225 Broadway for $48 million to Daniel Negari’s XYZ, which in August purchased another Irvine Company office building at 501 West Broadway for $69 million, less than half the prior purchase price.
Irvine Company sold Wells Fargo Plaza and Symphony Towers, more offices downtown, at steep discounts, in the past year or so too. Wells Fargo Plaza sold for $40 million (a discount of more than $100 million); Symphony Towers went for about $48 million (which came out to an almost 70 percent price cut).
Downtown San Diego appears to be faring better than downtown Los Angeles, by the numbers, but not by much. Downtown San Diego offices had a 29 percent vacancy rate in the third quarter, according to Colliers. That’s compared to Downtown Los Angeles’ 33 percent vacancy rate, per a CBRE report.
Irvine Company held these office buildings for decades before selling. The office world has changed immensely since the pandemic, and the offloading could represent a change in Bren’s company, which still has a number of properties throughout San Diego County, in Del Mar and La Jolla, for instance.
