TGS to Convert OC Campus Into Logistics Hub
Hedge fund will convert two office buildings in Irvine into two warehouses.
TGS Management, a quantitative finance hedge fund with offices in Irvine and Princeton, is planning to redevelop a former satellite campus it acquired from Cal State Fullerton in Irvine into a logistics hub.
The company has filed plans to develop two warehouses at 1 and 3 Banting in Irvine. The property currently is occupied by a pair of two-story office buildings encompassing a total of 138K SF, according to a report in the Orange County Business Journal.
If approved, the project will become the largest office-to-warehouse conversion in the Spectrum area of Irvine, the report said.
Adaptive re-use projects involving office campuses in Orange County have been trending. Last year, Kearny Real Estate Co. announced plans to demolish Elevate @ Harbor, a two-building office campus the company acquired in 2018 and renovated in Santa Ana, near John Wayne Airport.
Kearny will replace the office campus with the Harbor Logistics Center, a 163K SF facility that is expected to be delivered early next year.
TGS bought the 12-acre campus in Irvine from Cal State in 2021 in a sale-leaseback transaction for about $50M, nearly $360 per SF. The leaseback part of the deal was short-term.
Cal State Fullerton closed the two-building campus, known as the CSUF Irvine Center, in June 2021. The university purchased the two Banting buildings in 2013, but never fully occupied the property, leasing out one of the buildings to Western Law School.
When Western Law School’s lease on Banting 1 expired during the pandemic in 2020, the university decided to put both of the Irvine buildings on the market.
TGS now owns more than 60 acres in Irvine and leases a 115K SF building at the Irvine Company’s Spectrum Terrace office campus.
In February 2023, TGS bought a 42-acre site on Barranca Parkway in the Great Park Neighborhoods of Irvine for $240M from Five Point Holdings, an Irvine-based master developer.
According to the Business Journal, TGS is planning to build a 500K SF+ data center on the Barranca Parkway site for its finance operations. In 2020, the hedge fund bought a 4.6-acre office property at 23 Pasteur for $28M, a site it is now developing into a 48K SF data center for its quantitative trading.