Ford sells Irvine complex

Ford Motor Co. has sold its West Coast headquarters buildings in Irvine to Transpacific Development Co. for $73 million in one of the largest real estate transactions of the year in Southern California, the companies said Monday.

The sale comes at a time when Ford, like its fellow U.S. automakers General Motors and Chrysler, faces substantial pressure to maximize its financial resources.

Ford will remain a tenant in the two connected buildings just off the Santa Ana Freeway.

The automaker completed the buildings in 2001 for its own use but no longer needs all 270,000 square feet of office space, Ford spokesman John Clinard said.

The company dismantled its Premier Automotive Group, which had its North American headquarters in the complex, and cut back on space for Lincoln and Mercury. “The building became ever more vacant,” Clinard said.

At the time of the sale, the automaker had already agreed to lease about two-thirds of the complex to the parent company of Taco Bell.

Clinard said the fast-food chain would move its headquarters to One Premier Place, a five-story building on the property, in 2010.

A wide range of investors sought the Ford complex, said real estate broker Michael Kane of CB Richard Ellis.

Transpacific President Tom Irish said the company paid full price -- $270 a square foot -- for the property, in what he said was the largest commercial sale of the year so far in Southern California.

The acquisition was the first in California for Torrance-based Transpacific in the last five years, Irish said. “In our view, California was very overheated.”

Irish declined to speculate on whether the sale indicated that the commercial market had bottomed. The fully occupied Ford buildings were too appealing to pass up, he said.

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