Terran Orbital pre-leases 94K sf industrial building in Irvine

Terran Orbital is adding a 94,000-square-foot building to its manufacturing base in Irvine.

The Florida-based satellite maker signed a 10-year lease for a 94,200-square-foot industrial building under construction at 4 Goodyear, the Orange County Business Journal reported.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

New York-based W.P. Carey, the building’s owner and developer, expects to complete it next year after it wraps up demolition of an industrial building of similar size.

W.P. Carey acquired the 5-acre property in 2002 in a sale-leaseback deal with Astronics, a New York-based aerospace electronics company. Astronics, which once occupied the now-bulldozed building, moved its Irvine operations to Orlando last year.

The lease for the new building was brokered by Steve Wagner, Zach Niles, Louis Tomaselli and Ethan Jacobs of JLL.

It’s not yet clear what Terran Orbital plans for the site, which would add to the company’s more than 200,000 square feet of industrial plants in Irvine.

Terran Orbital’s Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems division manufactures small satellites for the aerospace and defense industries, and has been one of the fastest-growing local tech firms in terms of real estate growth, according to the Business Journal.

Its latest industrial lease coincides with a $2.4 billion order from Rivada Space Networks for 300 Low Earth Orbit, or LEO, satellites. 

“I believe this is the largest small-satellite deal in the history of small satellites — I don’t know any deal that is larger,” Marc Bell, CEO of Terran Orbital, told the Business Journal last month.

Rivada Space is a unit of Rivada Networks, a Washington, D.C.-based wireless technology company focused on the convergence of terrestrial and satellite communications. Terran’s Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems division will design, build and deploy the satellites for Rivada, with deployment expected to start in 2025.

The Rivada contract came three months after Terran received a $100 million investment from Lockheed Martin, its largest customer. The Maryland-based firm owns 35 percent of Terran.

Terran, founded in 2013, aims to produce 1,000 satellites a year. It employed 312 people in Orange County last August, according to the Business Journal. That’s up 121 percent from the previous year, placing it among the fastest-growing tech firms in the area.

— Dana Bartholomew