Irvine Company exits downtown San Diego with sale of One America Plaza

Southern California real estate giant Irvine Company has completed its retreat from downtown San Diego with the sale of its flagship office tower, One America Plaza, to a familiar, high-net-worth buyer.

On Tuesday, a joint venture affiliated with Sacramento-based real estate company Saca Development purchased the 658,000-square-foot, obelisk-shaped skyscraper at 600 W. Broadway for $120 million, according to property records.

The 2.9-acre property near Santa Fe Depot traded for less than half of what Irvine Company paid for the property nearly 20 years ago. The firm paid $285.4 million in 2006, taking over a $100 million loan from the previous owner at the time.

“Following a competitive process that involved a number of potential buyers, we are pleased that Saca Development has purchased One America Plaza,” Eastdil Secured managing director Adam Edwards, who represented the seller, said in a statement to the Union-Tribune.

One America LLC and Saca Properties LLC, which are subsidiaries of Saca Development, purchased a 60% controlling interest in the property. Saca Development is run by John Saca, whose father started the Filco Superstore home appliance business in Sacramento in the 1970s. Saca is partnered with his daughters, Chase and Payton Saca, on the endeavor.

The purchase is the second San Diego-area transaction for the family office in less than a year. In November 2024, Saca Development bought 101 W. Broadway from the Irvine Company.

Oram One America Plaza LLC, an entity linked to local broker and hotel owner Alvin Mansour, purchased a 40% interest in the asset. The Oram Hotels portfolio includes The Guild Hotel at 500 W. Broadway, next to One America Plaza.

The transaction was financed in part with a loan from a real estate credit fund managed in partnership by Hines and Rialto Credit. The loan has a maximum principal sum of $91 million, according to the deed of trust, but the buyer said it only used a portion of the available funds for the purchase.

“We see One America Plaza as a cornerstone of a revitalized Broadway corridor, which we expect to be one of downtown’s most dynamic and evolving districts,” Payton Saca told the Union-Tribune. “We really think this investment is a vote of confidence about the continued evolution (of downtown).”

Built in 1991, the 34-story, 500-foot-tall office tower at 600 W. Broadway is San Diego’s tallest skyscraper. Designed by renowned postmodern architect Helmut Jahn, One America Plaza is also one of downtown’s most distinctive skyscrapers, with a roof that the new owner refers to as “the screwdriver.”

The property features a four-story lobby wrapped in marble, an indoor waterfall, panoramic city and water views, ground-floor restaurants and a museum annex currently leased to the Navy SEAL Museum San Diego for $1 per year.

The office building was 87.5% leased at the time of its sale, said Tyler Jemmett, an executive with brokerage CBRE who is overseeing leasing for Saca Development.

“(One America Plaza) has always had a great reputation in the marketplace as one of the best buildings, and having one of the best locations, in downtown,” Jemmett said. “As a result of that, it has always been pretty well leased, is a market leader from a rent perspective, and has some really high-quality tenants.”

The building’s largest tenant is the Office of the Attorney General of California, which occupies 150,000 square feet of space across seven floors. The state government lease, which accounts for nearly one quarter of the building, expires in 2027.

Saca plans to upgrade the building’s lobby, refresh the conference center, create a coworking area, build a gym and do something creative with a 10,000-square-foot space on the 34th floor, Payton Saca said.

“In the short term, we’re making targeted capital improvements … and we’re hoping to achieve higher rents, which we’re actually seeing at some of our competitors’ assets within the downtown San Diego sub market,” she said.

The One America Plaza trade marks a pivotal shift in the downtown commercial real estate market, said Derek Hulse, an executive with Cushman & Wakefield who leads the brokerage’s office division.

“This welcomes in a new era of downtown high-rise office ownership,” he said. “Irvine Company was a great owner, operator of (the best) towers in downtown San Diego. They also had control of the market, given their share of the inventory. These sales allow for new ownership, new ideas and new capital in a more competitive landscape amongst the new owners.”

Irvine Company has exited downtown San Diego with dramatic flair, igniting a spark that has burned its way through the B Street and Broadway business corridors.

The firm’s selling spree started in September 2024 with Symphony Towers at 750 B St., which was offloaded for $45.7 million (or $84 per square foot) — around a third of what Irvine Company paid for the property in 2003.

A few months later, the company sold its office towers at 101 W. Broadway and 225 Broadway for $43.9 million and $48 million, respectively. In April, Irvine Company sold 401 B St., better known as Wells Fargo Plaza, to Prebys Foundation for $40 million, setting a new market low of $80 per square foot. And, in late July, the firm sold 501 W. Broadway for $69 million.

During the 13-month period, neighboring towers — 530 B St., 600 B St., 525 B St. and 550 W. C St.— were either traded at discount prices or taken over by their lenders.

One America Plaza’s relatively high sales price — $182 per square foot — compared against the other trades speaks more to the location and quality of One America Plaza than to a downtown recovery from depressed values, Hulse said.

“It’s the high-water mark for all of the six assets that (Irvine Company) sold. It’s the furthest west. It’s the most iconic. It has incredible views,” he said. “You’re not going to see a valuation above One America in the near future.”

Amid Irvine Company’s retreat from downtown, the firm has doubled down on University City, where the city’s recently approved community plan has created legal space for more than 30,000 additional residential units.

Irvine Company is in the process of remaking the western portion of The Plaza office campus fronting La Jolla Village Drive with hundreds of apartments as part of a broader push to add housing to office campuses. In University City, Irvine Company owns 46 office buildings with a total of 4.5 million square feet of space spread across nine different campuses. The company also has four apartment communities with nearly 1,800 units in the area.