REAL ESTATE

Back to the Past: Industrial buildings in the Anaheim and Santa Ana area that were converted to offices during the defense-industry boom of the 1980s may return to their original industrial use now that defense is in a slump.

“In many cases, the bulge in office space created by the defense industry was accommodated by converting an industrial building to office space,” Coldwell Banker broker Rick Warner wrote in a recent report on the central Orange County office market.

“Many of the projects if not utilized by an office-user will revert back to their former life, serving the needs of the industrial community,” he said.

Meanwhile, the outlook for the higher-class office space--the towers that have begun to dot the center of the county in the last 10 years--is improving.

While the Anaheim, Santa Ana and Orange area doesn’t contain the most glamorous business addresses in the county--those are mostly in Irvine and Newport Beach--many office users such as banks and insurance companies like the area because it has a large labor pool.

And there’s not much being built there these days. Only one high-rise office building is under construction there, says Warner--Bentall’s 200,000-square-foot Executive Center in Santa Ana.