Diana Sabau 
A joint venture including Houston-based real estate investment firm Hines has obtained a $144 million loan for Intersect, a four-building campus in Irvine, Calif.
The lender, New York Life Insurance Co., has agreed to a three-year, floating-rate loan with extension options. Proceeds will be directed towards refinancing existing debt and filling the remaining vacancies at the campus properties.
The Intersect campus stretches across 15 acres of land and comprises four buildings, located at 17875 and 17877 Von Karman Avenue and 17872 and 17838 Gillette Avenue, near the intersection of Main Street and Von Karman Avenue. The campus consists of 452,203 square feet of Irvine office space and is part of the Airport Area submarket of Orange County.
Hines has plans for extensive improvements to the property, such as the addition of new conference rooms, retail, outside workspaces and the refurbishing of existing lobbies and restrooms, along with upgrades to the campus’ landscaping.
These renovations are part of a larger revamping effort conducted by Hines since 2015 its acquisition of Intersect—back then known as the Washington Mutual Campus. Since then, several micro-retail shops were added, along with a restaurant and a 6,000-square-foot indoor/outdoor gym.
Kevin MacKenzie, John Chun, Jamie Kline and Peter Thompson represented Hines as part of HFF’s debt placement team. Executive Managing Director MacKenzie referred to the deal as “a great example of a sponsor strategically managing their business plan to take advantage of capital market dynamics. By working together with our Investment Advisory team to establish value, and then structuring the financing offer properly based on current metrics in the debt markets, the sponsor was able to partially re-capitalize the asset mid-way through the business plan while significantly reducing their cost of capital. Hines and NY Life were excellent to work with throughout the process.”
