$44-Million Lease Signed for Newport Office Space : Real estate: Canadian developer Bramalea California granted huge concessions, however, to get Hewitt Associates into the office building that will overlook Upper Newport Bay.

Canadian developer Bramalea California said Monday it had signed management consulting firm Hewitt Associates to a $44-million lease in an office building Bramalea plans to build overlooking the Upper Newport Bay here.

The lease is the latest in a series of big deals signed over the last several years by Orange County landlords. It covers as much as 130,000 square feet, or nearly three floors of the six-story building, and runs 10 years.

That makes the deal, which had long been rumored, one of half a dozen of the largest office leases ever signed in the county. Construction starts next month, and the building is scheduled to open in late 1991.

During the months-long negotiations, Hewitt drove a hard bargain: It obtained about a 30% ownership in the new building, depending on how much space it ultimately leases.

Hewitt also got Bramalea to assume its old lease at Santa Ana’s Hutton Centre office park. Bramalea must now make Hewitt’s rent payments for three years unless it can find another tenant for the 70,000 square feet of space.

Despite a soft office market in which tenants can make these sorts of demands of landlords, Bramalea officials said they believe that they can lease the Hutton Centre space quickly.

“With the options on the lease, it runs for a fairly long time, and the location is good,” said Samuel E. Haynes, Bramalea’s executive vice president. “We think we can get somebody in there pretty quick.”

That may be so, said a local real estate broker, “but at what price? They’ll probably have to charge less than the lease rate to get someone in.”

The deal, however, allows Bramalea to complete its 64-acre Bayview office and residential development, which already includes a Marriott Suite hotel, Downey Savings & Loan’s headquarters in a structure identical to the new building, restaurants, stores and two gated residential neighborhoods. With Hewitt signed up, the new building is about 70% pre-leased, Bramalea said.

Bayview is the company’s largest project in Orange County. With its much bigger Corporate Pointe office project in West Los Angeles still under development, Bramalea said it doesn’t contemplate another big project in Orange County soon.

Hewitt said it picked the Bayview building because the company likes to own at least a piece of the structures it occupies. The firm had owned a piece of the Hutton Centre 3 building until it was sold to a Japanese company.

It also liked the ambience of the Upper Newport Bay setting, said Hewitt; the buildings look out over the bay and the marshes. “We liked all the open space and the fact that a lot of it will never be developed,” said Jim Ozark, Hewitt’s managing partner.

Hewitt is one of the world’s largest consulting firms specializing in employee benefits and compensation. It is based in Lincolnshire, Ill., near Chicago. The Bayview building will house its Southern California headquarters.

The building will have an exterior of imported granite and tinted glass. A large marble-and-granite lobby will have a waterfall enclosed in a three-story canopy.

Bramalea California is a unit of Bramalea Ltd., a publicly held Toronto developer that owns or manages more than 32 million square feet of offices, hotels and malls.

Bramalea said recently that it earned $64.8 million for the fiscal year ending Oct. 31, 1989, on revenues of $1.1 billion. Earnings rose 37% from 1988’s $47.4 million on revenues of $797 million.

In addition to commercial development, the company also builds homes in Southern California.