Ernst & Young Heading to Airport

A major accounting firm will announce today that it plans to anchor a 10-story office tower that will be erected in the John Wayne Airport area later this year.

Ernst & Young, one of the nation’s largest accounting firms, and E & Y Kenneth Leventhal Real Estate Group, a subsidiary specializing in real estate, have agreed to combine their Orange County offices at Lakeshore Towers on Von Karman Avenue in Irvine.

“It’s a public vote of confidence in the (commercial) market,” said Michael Dorsey, a senior vice president at Grubb & Ellis Inc., of the new building estimated to cost $50 million.

It will attract attention from companies looking for space because it is close to the airport and will be visible from the San Diego Freeway, he said.

The firms, which currently occupy a total of 65,000 square feet in Irvine and Newport Beach, will expand their offices by nearly 50%, leasing 93,000 square feet in the new 230,000-square-foot building. It is being developed by Dorn-Platz of Glendale.

Work is expected to begin later this summer and will be completed by the middle of next year.

An earlier phase of Lakeshore Tower, built across the street, is one of Orange County’s largest buildings at 18 stories. The new tower would be the third new office project in the area. The others, the first new towers to be built in Orange County in nearly a decade, are expected to be completed this year.

Earlier this decade, vacancy rates soared above 20% as defense contractors downsized and other companies moved out of state. But as the economy improved and the region’s unemployment rate dropped, vacancies had fallen to 8.4% last year, the lowest level on record, according to Grubb & Ellis.