Owner of OC’s biggest home buys Huntington Beach office campus for $42M

A family office tied to Joe C. Wen has bought a 394,000-square-foot office campus in Huntington Beach for $42 million — 66 percent less than it traded for five years ago.

The unidentified family office affiliated with the founder of global conglomerate Formosa, based in Taiwan, bought One Pacific Plaza at 7711, 7755 and 7777 Center Avenue, the Orange County Business Journal reported, citing unidentified sources. 

The sellers were Pendulum Property Partners, based in Irvine, and an affiliate of Century City-based Ares Management. The price works out to $107 per square foot.

Pendulum Property and Ares Management bought the 12-story tower and two six-story buildings in 2018 for $124.5 million, or $316 per square foot.

Atlanta-based SunTrust Bank, the prior lender for the office campus, also lost on the deal, with more than $90 million in debt tied to the property.

The owners had worked with SunTrust to sell the offices and recoup property losses suffered in the wake of the pandemic, sources told the Business Journal.

“The deal is the first sizable institutional office to come on the market in a lender-facilitated deal,” Paul Jones of Newmark told the newspaper.

One Pacific Plaza was 70 percent leased. Its largest building, the 199,300-square-foot tower at 7755 Center Avenue, serves as the headquarters of BJ’s Restaurants, which takes up 56,000 square feet.

Other tenants include Confie, a finance and insurance firm whose headquarters occupies 25,000 square feet at 7711 Center Avenue. 

The purchase marks the second office deal this year for Wen, a native of Taiwan.

In February, the entrepreneur and philanthropist bought 4 Hutton Centre, a 10-story, 216,900-square-foot office tower in Santa Ana for $24.9 million, or $115 per square foot. That’s 55 percent less than it sold for in 2019.

Wen, who lives in Newport Beach, owns a 55,000-square foot Italianate mansion known as Villa de Formosa, the largest home in Orange County and among the largest in the U.S. He gave $20 million in June to UC Irvine for an outpatient clinic at its new UCI Health-Irvine complex.

His company Formosa is a conglomerate that operates in five industries, including real estate ownership and development.

— Dana Bartholomew

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