Seal Beach, CA — Harbor Associates, LLC (“Harbor”), a value add and opportunistic buyer and owner in the office market, completed the lease up of the Bungalows Del Mar Office (https://www.thebungalowsdelmar.com/) despite the pandemic and work from home trends and now the recession that has slowed traditional office leasing. This Del Mar office space created by Harbor has been so successful that a rare vacant office space totaling 2,086 square feet has recently become available for the first time in nearly five years.
The Bungalows Del Mar Office is a 39,537-square-foot trend setting low-rise office building in the highly desirable coastal San Diego submarket of Del Mar. Harbor vacated the building and completed a major $4 million trend setting and stunning renovation.
Harbor, in joint venture with the Bascom Group, LLC, acquired the Del Mar office property located at 2010 Jimmy Durante Boulevard with the plan of repositioning the asset to appeal to a broader tenant base. Improvements included a complete exterior redesign, new creative office spec suites with exposed vaulted ceilings, skylights, and operable windows. Joon Choi, Harbor principal, stated “To leverage the building’s location less than one mile from the beach and the Village of Del Mar, Harbor upgraded the expansive outdoor space and patio areas to create ‘outdoor meeting rooms’ and installed a locker room with showers, and electric car chargers. It’s been an easy sales pitch for our leasing team of Joe Anderson and Brooks Campbell at Cushman & Wakefield. We just don’t have any vacant space to lease to accommodate the strong interest.”
The building’s location, design, and functionality in coastal Del Mar contributed to the leasing success during the pandemic and work from home trend, according to Harbor Principal Rich McEvoy. “While most other office owners have suffered from declining office demand and work from home trends, Bungalows Del Mar office has enjoyed significant leasing interest and demand with almost every tenant renewing their lease for more term. We have had to tell every interested company that ‘sorry, we have nothing available’. Del Mar office tenants have been drawn to our exterior entries rather than enclosed hallways, restrooms accessed from outdoor common space, excellent circulation with operable windows throughout, expansive outdoor patio and meeting space, independent HVAC systems, and social distancing design plan,” said McEvoy. Picture and videos of the sunning renovation can be seen here: (https://www.thebungalowsdelmar.com/gallery.html)
Despite office buildings being out of favor among institutional investors, Harbor continues to seek out select and contrarian opportunities in this distressed sector to create value. “We’re pursuing acquisition strategies for similar well located and differentiated office projects that will be in demand as workers continue to return to the office. We have a robust pipeline of activity and look forward to adding to our Southern California portfolio,” added Harbor Principal Justin Loiacono.
Harbor Associates and F&F Capital Group recently purchased nearby Highlands Corporate Center, a Class A Del Mar office campus in San Diego’s Del Mar Heights, for an undisclosed price. Located at 12730-12780 High Bluff Drive in San Diego, Highlands Corporate Center offers 211,000 square feet of office space spread across five buildings. The recently renovated Del Mar office campus features new lobby finishes, a new conference center, fitness facilities, tenant lounge and an outdoor pavilion, as well as electric vehicle charging stations and private balconies on several of the upper-floor tenant suites.
Paul Miszkowicz stated “Harbor has been one of the most active buyers of distressed office in Southern California this past year despite the lack of debt financing and institutional interest. The office acquisitions we have made have all been at significant discounts to replacement cost and mostly double-digit cap rates – and were all newer Class “A” properties in premier “A” locations. We are getting a lot of calls from private equity funds and family offices that are interested in capitalizing on this distressed and contrarian opportunity with us in the office sector.”
About Harbor: Harbor Associates, LLC (www.harborassociates.com) is a value-add operating platform focused on acquiring and repositioning under-performing commercial real estate assets throughout Southern California. Harbor has been involved in the renovation, repositioning and development of 40 commercial projects totaling over 4.0 million square feet with a portfolio value in excess of $1.0B. The company is a joint venture with The Bascom Group, LLC.
About Bascom: Bascom is a private equity firm specializing in value-added multifamily, commercial, and non-performing loans and real estate related investments and operating companies. Bascom sources value-added and distressed properties including many through foreclosure, bankruptcy, or short sales and repositions them by adding extensive capital improvements, improving revenue, and reducing expenses by realizing operational efficiencies through implementation of institutional-quality property management. Bascom, founded by principals Derek Chen, Jerry Fink, and David Kim, is one of the most active and seasoned buyers and operators of apartment communities in the U.S. Since 1996, Bascom has completed over $22.0 billion in multifamily value-added transactions encompassing 358 multifamily properties and over 105,000 units. Bascom’s commercial transaction volume is $5.8 billion in total and amounts to over 23.4 million square feet. Bascom has ranked among the top 50 multifamily owners in the U.S. Bascom’s subsidiaries and joint ventures include the Bascom Value Added Apartment Investors, Shubin Nadal Associates, Spirit Bascom Ventures, REDA Bascom Ventures, Bascom Northwest Ventures, Bascom Arizona Ventures, Harbor Associates, Village Partners Ventures, and Realm Group. Bascom’s subsidiaries also include Premier Workspaces, one of the largest privately held executive suite, coworking and shared workspace companies in the U.S. For additional information, please visit www.bascomgroup.com.
