Pacific Coast Business Times: Orfalea Foundation office building available for lease

An Orfalea Foundation office building is on the market as the nonprofit prepares to close by the end of the year.

About 3,000 square feet of office space is available for lease at $5.75 per square foot. The two-story building has 11 parking spaces and three restrooms. Rob Hambleton and Steve Golis of Radius Commercial Real Estate & Investments are handling the lease.

Hambleton said the space would work for a stock brokerage company, a wealth management firm or a professional services business.

The quaint Victorian house looks like it’s better suited for a family rather than workers, desks and computers. It was built in 1925 and the total value was assessed in 2015 for just less than $3 million, according to property records.

For the first time in history, the average Santa Barbara office market gross lease rate reached $3 per square foot as vacancy dipped to 3.4 percent, according to the Radius Group. The vacancy rate is down from 4.7 percent in the third quarter last year.

“We continue to see numerous upstarts dominate smaller spaces in addition to larger expansions with the likes of heavy hitters Sonos and AppFolio,” a recent report reads.

The Orfalea Foundation is a Santa Barbara-based nonprofit predominantly focused on early childhood education, proper nutrition, reforming school food and better coordinating emergency response.

The foundation was created with an end in sight. The board approved a timeline in 2009 that outlined six years of additional funding. When the 22 employees at the foundation heard in late 2013 they’d be out of a job by 2016, it didn’t come as a surprise.

“Knowing that we couldn’t fund something forever, we used a tool that outlined the progressive phases of an initiative so we were thinking about phasing down and completion at the same time we were launching,” Vice President Catherine Brozowski said.