Fashion Island Office Premium

A low-rise office building next to Newport Beach’s swanky Fashion Island mall just sold for $11.5 million, fetching $756 per square foot.

A local private partnership offloaded Olen Pacific Plaza, located at 1303 Avocado Avenue, with the help of brokers at CBRE, the Orange County Business Journal reported.

The two-floor, 15,200-square-foot office building on a 0.4-acre lot, known as Olen Pacific Plaza, was at 96 percent occupancy at the time of the sale, according to CBRE.

The most recent owner of the property was Joan Edwards Randolph, the onetime chief corporate officer of Edwards Theatres, the former Newport Beach-based chain absorbed by Regal Cinemas in 2002. Current Olen Pacific tenants include LTK Venture 1, The Management Works, Maxim Hotel Brokerage and Meier Law Firm.

“This sale is one of only seven office properties within Newport Center to transact within the last 10 years, making this a truly rare and strategic acquisition opportunity, and as such drew extremely high demand amongst the investment community,” Anthony DeLorenzo, vice chair of CBRE, said in a statement.

The deal speaks to the upscale nature of the Newport Center area surrounding Fashion Island, which features high-end headquarters for PIMCO and Irvine Company among other high-rise offices on the eastern side of the mall.

It also points up disparities between the office markets of Newport Beach in Orange County and Los Angeles to the north, where a slow return to office in the downtown area and the persistent instances of homelessness and crime have/

Last year, the 1.3 million-square-foot Gas Company Tower in downtown Los Angeles sold for about $154 per square foot, paling in comparison to the Olen Pacific sale.

There’s no shortage of older, low-rise offices around the mall such as Olen Pacific Plaza, which could present a lucrative opportunity for redevelopment or residential conversion to the right buyer.

— Chris Malone Méndez