SANTA BARBARA — The Ortega Building, the former location of Macy’s in downtown Santa Barbara at 701 State St., is being repositioned by owner Pacific Retail Capital Partners as office space.
The three-story, 132,500 square-foot building will provide the largest office floor plates in the downtown area, with more than 40,000 square feet on each level, with half-floor suites as large as 20,000 square feet.
The structure is part of the 450,000 square-foot Paseo Nuevo shopping center, which recently completed more than $20 million in renovations, according to a news release.
Greg Bartholomew, Francois DeJohn and Steve Hayes of Hayes Commercial Group will market the office space on behalf of Pacific Retail. The ground floor is simultaneously being marketed to retail, restaurant and grocery tenants, and the building is expected to accommodate a mix of commercial uses, officials said.
“Frankly, there aren’t a lot of tenants in our area looking for 20,000 or 40,000 square feet of office, so we are marketing to companies in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, and beyond to consider adding an office location in Santa Barbara,” Mr. DeJohn said in a statement.
Macy’s occupied the store from the time Paseo Nuevo was built in the early 1990s until 2017. Pacific Retail, which already owned most of the center, acquired the vacant building in 2018.
— Mitchell White
