$18M Business Condo Project Breaks Ground

PALM DESERT, CA-Focus Real Estate of Irvine has begun construction on its 68,000-sf Monterey Shore Business Park office/warehouse condominium development, one of two new projects to get under way this month in this city. The other is a 40,000-sf professional office building called Village Court Professional Plaza by Irvine-based Boureston Development.

Focus Real Estate's four-acre project is on Dinah Shore Drive, west of Monterey Avenue, in the Monterey/Interstate-10 shopping area that includes a new Wal-Mart Supercenter, Sam's Club, Kohl's, Costco, Home Depot and numerous other national retailers and restaurants. The company is developing the project, which offers condos for sale, in a joint venture with HG Capital of Menlo Park.

The project's listing agents, Thom Gottberg and Brian Ward of CB Richard Ellis, say that it will offer some of the first such space for sale in the market. Gottberg says that prices for the condominiums wi9ll start at $245,000, with the majority of the units priced less than $500,000.

The project will consist of five buildings ranging from 946 sf to 2,589 sf, with office build-out of up to 50%.

The project, which is scheduled to be ready for occupancy in the spring, is being designed by William E. Skinner & Associates Inc. of Costa Mesa. The general contractor is R.M. Dalton of Newport Beach, with Newport Real Estate Services of Costa Mesa serving as project manager.

The Village Court Professional Plaza, which will offer its space for lease, is also slated to be ready for occupancy in the spring. It will be a one-story building of professional office suites for which the developer is offering a tenant improvement package that includes an allowance of $35 per sf and a lease rate of $2.10 per sf per month, triple-net, according to CB Richard Ellis.The CBRE agents for the project are Brian Ward, Troy Kudlac and Maggie Montez.