In the South Coast’s largest commercial sale of 2011, an investment group has acquired 301 Mentor Drive, a 70,282 sf office building in Goleta. The two-story building, which was listed at $19,860,000, is fully leased by Mentor Worldwide and Tetra Tech. In terms of both price and size, this is the largest sale of a single office building in Goleta in the past five years.

“It’s not often that a fully leased investment property of this quality becomes available for sale,” said Francois DeJohn. He and Steve Hayes of Hayes Commercial Group represented all parties in the transaction. The buyer is an undisclosed investment group based on the East Coast.

“A class A building with high-quality tenants next to a hospital will always be a very desirable asset, regardless of the market,” Steve Hayes noted. “In fact, the response to this offering was immediate.”

In a city known for excellent office properties, 301 Mentor Drive is certainly one of the showcase specimens. In addition to immaculate office space inside, the grounds include a lushly landscaped patio area, koi pond with footbridge, plus separate basketball and sand volleyball courts. The property was built by Bermant Development Co. in 1999 on 5.3 acres near the intersection of Hollister and Patterson Avenues. Since then, the entire building has been leased by Mentor Worldwide, a medical products company and subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. Mentor has since subleased 12,000 sf of the building to Tetra Tech, an engineering consulting firm. The property benefits from its proximity to Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital, which is being rebuilt from the ground up as a state-of-the-art medical facility.