Joe Wen’s Formosa Buys Twin Office Towers in Newport Beach

Joe Wen loves big buildings. Seven months after buying a 34-story office tower in San Diego, the owner of the biggest house in Orange County bought two 10-story towers in Newport Beach.

The owner of Taiwan-based conglomerate Formosa paid an undisclosed sum for the 310,000-square-foot office campus at 5000 Birch Street, the Orange County Business Journal reported. The seller was Toronto-based Manulife Financial.

The gleaming glass campus, built in 1983 a few blocks east of John Wayne Airport, includes east and west linked by an enclosed walkway surrounded by a landscaped courtyard.

Tenants include PayAssist, Regus and Lawyers Title. Formosa hired Dallas-based Lincoln Property to manage the property..

“Our strategy has always been to invest in well-located, high-potential office assets that provide long-term value to tenants and the local community,” Wen said in a statement.

He said Formosa plans “strategic upgrades,” though the cost and timeline of the renovations were not disclosed.

Formosa has been heavily investing in discounted offices across Southern California.

In September, the firm purchased Symphony Towers, the 34-story, 530,000-square-foot tower in Downtown San Diego for $45.7 million, or $86 per square foot. The seller was the Irvine Company, based in Newport Beach.

A year earlier, the Wen-led Formosa bought One Pacific Plaza, a 394,000-square-foot office campus at 7711, 7755 and 7777 Center Avenue in Huntington Beach, for $42 million, or $107 per square foot — 66 percent less than it traded for in 2018.

The previous February, the entrepreneur and philanthropist bought 4 Hutton Centre, a 10-story, 216,900-square-foot office tower in Santa Ana for $24.9 million, or $115 per square foot. That’s 55 percent less than it sold for in 2019.

Wen, who lives in Newport Beach, owns a 52,000-square-foot Italianate mansion known as Villa de Formosa, the largest home in Orange County and among the largest in the U.S. In 2022, he gave $20 million to UC Irvine for an outpatient clinic at its new UCI Health-Irvine complex.

— Dana Bartholomew