Tishman Speyer and Mitsui Fudosan America acquired a 31.9-acre, fully entitled industrial development site in Irvine for $149.5M. The partners announced plans to build four industrial buildings totaling 600K SF at the property.

The site is just off the 5 Freeway near Bake Parkway in the southern part of Irvine’s Great Park Neighborhoods master plan area. The master plan calls for a mix of uses in the areas it covers, including industrial.

“Great Park Neighborhoods is a perfect example of the type of ground-up development that we envisioned when we created our industrial platform with Mitsui Fudosan America,” Tishman Speyer Managing Director and Head of Industrial Andy Burke said in a release announcing the acquisition. “Utilizing our long-established local team, we were able to source a rare opportunity to create a well-located industrial facility that offers modern specifications within a severely supply-constrained and high-barrier urban center.”

The release says that in this part of Orange County especially, the industrial stock is often 30 or 40 years old and no new developments have come online in quite some time. The JV will build structures ranging from 73K to 203K SF.

Orange County’s total vacancy was just 2.8% in the fourth quarter, giving it the distinction of having Southern California’s lowest vacancy in the period, according to a JLL report.

This project is the second acquisition for the Tishman-MFA venture, which is focused on logistics properties. The JV began with a $500M funding commitment from MFA, plus “co-investment capital” of an undisclosed amount from Tishman Speyer. The partnership was created in 2022 to pursue ground-up development projects as well as repositioning and redevelopment of value-add industrial sites, a release from Tishman says.