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Newport Beach-based Buchanan Street Partners is making a play in South County with its purchase of Spectrum Centre Business Park.
The real estate investment management firm spent a Business Journal estimate of $63 million to buy a 16-building, 227,757-square-foot infill industrial park in Lake Forest from a Los Angeles-based fund manager.
The purchase is part of the company’s overall investment strategy to buy infill properties in Orange County, according to Matt Haugen, a co-head of commercial investments and senior vice president at Buchanan Street.
“It’s great real estate to hold on to,” Haugen told the Business Journal, noting that properties like Spectrum Centre are disappearing from the South County landscape and being replaced with housing.
Haugen said Buchanan Street’s plan is to pull back on the property’s office uses and bring in more industrial-themed tenants.
“These buildings are perfectly suited for (industrial) use,” Haugen said.
Haugen also predicted Spectrum Centre would have a larger consumer base surrounding the industrial campus in the coming years.
Kidder Mathews, in its 2025 Q1 market report for Orange County, said the average sales price for an industrial building was $321 per square foot.
Some of the biggest industrial transactions of 2025, so far, include The Walt Disney Co. buying an Anaheim warehouse from JP Morgan Chase & Co. for $124 million, or $305 per square feet, and New York Life Insurance Co. acquiring a Brea manufacturing building from AEW Capital Management for $92.1 million, or $421 per square foot.
The nearly 17-acre Spectrum Centre Business Park, at 20902-21098 Bake Pkwy., is near three major highways—the Foothill (241) Toll Road, the Santa Ana (5) Freeway and San Diego (405) Freeway.
It caters to “a growing residential community as more housing units are developed and demographics shift, with increasing numbers of people relocating to South Orange County,” according to Buchanan Street.
“This investment aligns with our strategy to target large infill sites in Orange County, featuring well located real estate that is in high demand and well below replacement cost,” Haugen said.
Spectrum Centre Business Park is a multi-tenant, small-bay industrial campus with 80% of its space leased, per Buchanan Street.
Buchanan Street plans to add wayfinding signs to the property, update the exterior of the buildings and update the curb appeal, Haugen said.
Some of Buchanan Street’s Orange County portfolio includes a 120,354-square-foot office building in Laguna Hills and a 301,328-square-foot industrial property in Buena Park.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Jeff Chiate, Rick Ellison, Matt Leupold and Aubrie Monahan represented the seller, who wasn’t identified.
OC Industrial Demand Slowing Down
Demand for industrial space in Orange County decreased during the first three months of 2025, compared to the final quarter of 2024, per Kidder Mathews.
“While Orange County remains in the lower half of the nation’s leading industrial markets, lease activity is expected to be lower than the median level amid tenant competition,” Kidder Mathews said in its report for the first quarter of 2025. “The vacancy rates have changed in alignment with the completion of various developments.”
Direct vacancies peaked at 4.8% for the first quarter of 2025, compared to 4.4% during the fourth quarter of 2024. Kidder Mathews added direct vacancies were less than 2% in 2021 and 2022 but began skyrocketing before the start of 2023.
“While tenant competition has reduced, it is expected to rise in parallel with the national average in the upcoming quarters,” Kidder Mathews said in its report. “The current weakening of demand, partly driven by the ongoing financial cycle and the impending new presidential administration, is evident in the exceptionally low levels of construction activity.”