OC billionaire sells pair of Irvine office buildings for $60M

A publicity shy billionaire boss of a hedge fund has gone from steady buyer to opportunistic seller of office properties in the Orange County white-collar hub of Irvine.

C. Frederick Taylor’s TGS Management got $60 million for a total of 165,000 or so square feet of vacant office space over two buildings at 1 and 3 Banting, the Orange County Business Journal reported. TGS had crafted plans to redevelop the office properties into a distribution complex, which appears to fit the pattern of the Chicago-based buyer Bridge Industrial.

The deal for the low-slung office buildings in the Irvine Spectrum commercial district came to about $435 per square foot, more than triple the price an undisclosed buyer paid last week for the Class A office, 52-story office tower at 777 South Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles. The comparison is somewhat skewed by the 12 acres of land that come with the two buildings in Irvine.

TGS, a hedge fund driven by quantitative analysis, recently leased the entire 115,000 square feet of nearby building at 17500 Laguna Canyon Road, within the Irvine Company’s Spectrum Terrace.

Taylor has a net worth of around $3.6 billion, according to the Business Journal’s latest OC’s Wealthiest list. His firm acquired the two buildings on Banting for about $50 million in 2021.

Neither Taylor, who has long shunned any spotlight, nor Bridge Industrial offered comments on the deal.

A move by the new owner to carry through on the redevelopment plan of TGS would put the site among the bigger office-to-industrial conversions in the Irvine Spectrum, an area that blends Class A office space and warehouses and distribution hubs next to a major mall that bears the same name. The area is especially attractive for distribution, criss-crossed by the 5 and 405 freeways and the local 133 toll road.

The formerly white-hot industrial market of Southern California has cooled recently but remains strong by historical measures. Orange County stands out in the broader region, with the lowest industrial vacancy rate at 4.6 percent, according to JLL, and an average asking rate on leases of $1.62 per square foot.

TGS made waves in Irvine when it paid $240 million to FivePoint Holdings, master developer of Great Park Neighborhoods in Irvine, for 42.1 acres of vacant land there.

TGS has not made its plans for the site public.