The Irvine Company has bailed out of a San Diego landmark just weeks after doubling down and then some on a major piece of Chicago’s skyline.
Donald Bren’s Newport Beach-based development and investment behemoth recently sold Symphony Towers, a 530,000-square-foot tower that reaches 34 floors above San Diego’s downtown, The Registry Southern California Real Estate reported.
Taiwan-based conglomerate Formosa Ltd. bought the property for $45.7 million, or about $86 per square foot, according to The Registry, citing public records.
The Irvine Company acquired the longtime home of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra at 750 B Street for $134.3 million — about $243 per square foot — in 2003. Longtime chairman Bren at the time was making a push beyond his traditional base in Orange County, adding properties in San Diego, Silicon Valley, and, to a lesser extent, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.
The Irvine Company, which did not respond to a direct question on the price of the deal, instead referred to the company’s statement when the property went on the market earlier this year.
Bren is the wealthiest real estate developer in the U.S., with a net worth of $18 billion, according to the Orange County Business Journal.
He recently paid off a landmark building in Chicago — and dedicated $30 million for upgrades of the property — as it neared a maturity date on a $431 million mortgage.
Bren’s divestiture in San Diego’s downtown — the Irvine Company still owns numerous other properties in the market, including the high-end La Jolla submarket — makes some room for newcomers Joe Wen, founder and CEO of Formosa Ltd.
“This acquisition provides an extraordinary opportunity for us to establish a foothold in one of San Diego’s premier office locations,” said Wen.
The new landlord faces challenges in San Diego’s office market, which saw overall leasing fall by 20 percent and vacancy rise to 14.7 percent in the second quarter, according to The Registry. Submarkets such as downtown and University Town Center have been particularly hard hit — the latter has more than 550,000 square feet of sublease space available, according to prior reports.
Wen also has been busy in Bren’s backyard of Orange County. His company recently bought the 400,000-square-foot One Pacific Plaza office complex in Huntington Beach, and the 10-story Hutton Centre in Santa Ana.
Wen has begun to emulate Bren in terms of philanthropy, too. He recently gave $70 million spread over two separate gifts to University of California — Irvine, which is home to the newly created Joe C. Wen School of Population and Public Health at UCI.
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