Donald Bren
Chairman and owner at The Irvine Company
Last year's rank: 38
It’s one thing to be the richest real estate mogul in the United States, and it’s another to be the owner of one of the nation’s largest landlord companies. Then it’s another thing entirely to be both, and to still be growing as rapidly as Donald Bren’s Irvine Company.
Whether it’s 1,200 single-family units underway in Orange Heights, or 4,500 apartments in the works in the city of Irvine, the company appears to be ramping up, starting new projects around Southern California, which continues to suffer an endless housing crisis. At the same time, they announced improved office activity when the region is starving for demand.
Bren has been running Irvine Company since he acquired it in 1977. The company famously started the master-planned Orange County city that bears its name, as well as the Newport Coast community. Irvine manages some 129 million square feet of real estate today, mostly in Southern California.
Irvine is the largest office landlord in California with more than 590 office buildings, and saw leasing increase last year, securing more than 10 million square feet of deals, according to the Orange County Business Journal. Irvine counts Amazon and Apple as office tenants, and completed the 1 million-square-foot Spectrum Terrace and the first two phases of the 1.1 million-square-foot Innovation Office Park.
In April 2023, Axonics signed to take two Irvine Company office buildings in Irvine for nearly 145,500 square feet, marking the largest office deal in Orange County in two years, according to media reports. In January 2023, the Irish government signed for 43,108 square feet at the MetLife Building in Manhattan, which Irvine owns with Tishman Speyer.
In December, Irvine announced three office leases totaling 92,130 square feet at the Fox Plaza tower in L.A.’s Century City, one of the most expensive markets in the country. And Western Asset Management’s 184,581-square-foot renewal with Irvine in Pasadena was the largest lease signed in Greater L.A. in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Irvine also owns 125 apartment complexes, 40 retail centers, one coastal resort, three golf courses and five marinas. The firm also plans to build a 532,000-square-foot life sciences office complex next to the University of California-Irvine campus.
Last year, Irvine notably sold the 541-room Hotel Irvine, the largest hotel in the city, for $135 million, as well as a Santa Monica apartment complex for $330 million.
