COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE : Newport Office Tower’s New Owner Will Concentrate on Tenants’ Needs

When a bank takes over a building it doesn’t want, it typically treats the property like a stepchild. The building isn’t a long-term investment on which the new owner wishes to lavish a lot of tender, loving care. Rather, it is a nuisance--something to unload as soon as possible.

Such was the fate of 4100 Newport Place, a nine-story office tower in Newport Beach on which the Bank of Boston foreclosed in 1990 after the building’s developer, McLachlan Investment Co. of Newport Beach, fell behind on the construction loan. For the next year and a half, the building’s occupancy rate never crept above 50%, so the bank focused on selling the property rather than marketing it to tenants.

But all of that will change now that the building has found an attentive owner, said Jim Buckingham, vice president of Davis Partners, a Newport Beach property-management company. T.A. Associates Realty, a Boston-based pension fund adviser, bought the building Tuesday for $13.7 million. The transaction is the largest Class A office sale in Orange County so far this year.

“Leasing the building was not the bank’s primary objective,” said Buckingham, whose firm will manage the property. “But T.A. is in this for the long haul. We plan to be more sensitive to the needs of the tenants.”

The new strategy includes enticing prospective tenants with massive improvements that will cost $3 million.

Despite the extra money that T.A. Associates will spend upgrading the building, the sale price was a great deal, Buckingham said: “Other buildings in the immediate neighborhood sold in excess of $300 per square foot a few years ago, while this one was about $75 per square foot.”