AT&T; Signs 10-Year Lease on Irvine Spectrum Facility

AT&T; officials signed a 10-year lease agreement with the Irvine Co. on Thursday to occupy more than a third of a $50-million, 14-story building in the Irvine Spectrum development.

AT&T; plans to use the space as a regional headquarters, and more than half of the telephone company’s 1,500 Orange County employees will work there by 1989, when the building is scheduled to be completed.

Though corporate officers of both companies refused to divulge the value of the lease, a Newport Beach broker for Grubb & Ellis, a commercial brokerage firm active in the area, estimated that AT&T; would pay $35 million for the 125,000 square feet it is leasing over the 10-year period.

The 14-story, 325,000-square-foot building will house about 800 AT&T; sales and administrative workers presently scattered throughout four of the company’s 12 county locations, officials said.

The building, in the center of the so-called golden triangle bounded by the Santa Ana, San Diego and Laguna freeways, “will be the first major anchor” of the Irvine Spectrum complex, said Paul Brady, Irvine’s assistant city manager.