Buchanan Street pays $28M for Laguan Niguel office building

Buchanan Street Partners has picked up a 120,300-square-foot office building in Laguna Niguel for $28.1 million.

The Newport Beach-based real estate investor bought the four-story Oakbrook Plaza at 24422 Avenida de la Carlota with plans to convert it into a medical building, the Orange County Business Journal reported. The seller was Lincoln Property, based in Dallas.

The price came out to $234 per square foot, about the same price Lincoln paid in 2016. That doesn’t include its sale of an unspecified piece of the property to the state Department of Transportation for $4.9 million.

The Oakbrook offices, built in 1983 and revamped in 2003, sit on 7 acres just off the Santa Ana Freeway, between El Toro Road and Los Alisos Boulevard. It’s nearly 70 percent occupied by tenants that include the Orange County Eye Institute, Saddleback Family Medicine and Harvest Small Business Finance.

It’s also less than a mile from MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center, the eighth-largest hospital in Orange County, as well as a cluster of medical offices near the hospital.

A medical office conversion would be the new owner’s second following a similar makeover in the works in Newport Beach. Buchanan bought a pair of office buildings at 1400 and 1420 Bristol Street North in early 2020 for $11.5 million, according to the Business Journal.

The 42,697-square-foot offices have been approved for a medical office conversion, though no timeline has been set. Buchanan also owns The Jetty, a 37,000-square-foot office complex next to Newport Beach Golf Course.

Its last OC purchase was in March 2021, when it paid $24 million for the E405 Euclid Shops, a 92,000-square-foot shopping center in Fountain Valley, just north of the 405 Freeway.

Recent acquisitions have been out of state.

In November, Buchanan helped Costa Mesa-based Arnel & Affiliates buy a 354-unit apartment complex in McKinney, Texas. The acquisition required a $56 million loan.

The deal was Buchanan’s fifth multifamily property in Texas, which now includes 1,600 apartments in Grand Prairie, Rowlett, Dallas and Fort Worth. The investor also owns commercial properties, both office and industrial.

Buchanan returned to the Texas multifamily market in October 2020 with the purchase of the 351-unit Waters Edge in Grand Prairie. Prior to the McKinney purchase, its most recent acquisition was the 387-unit Jameson at the Bluffs in Fort Worth, in November 2021.

In early 2021, the company said it planned on spending between $350 million and $500 million within five years on self-storage properties and development in major markets across the West, according to the Business Journal.

— Dana Bartholomew

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