Orange retail space for lease in 2026 runs roughly $2.00 to $5.50 per square foot per month on a triple-net basis, and the spread inside that range says almost everything about where a tenant lands. A restaurant patio on the Orange Circle plaza commands a very different number than a service suite on a Tustin Street strip, even though the two sit barely three miles apart. The City of Orange packs a historic downtown, two regional shopping destinations, and a dense medical district into roughly 25 square miles, and each of those trade areas prices, leases, and delivers space on its own terms. This guide walks the city corridor by corridor, with typical rent ranges and the leasing dynamics behind them.
What does Orange retail space for lease cost in 2026?
Across the City of Orange, asking rents for retail space generally fall between $2.00 and $5.50 per square foot per month on a triple-net basis in mid-2026. Neighborhood strip centers on secondary corridors sit at the low end, around $2.00 to $3.00, while restaurant and destination space in Old Towne Orange reaches $4.50 to $5.50 or higher when a rare storefront on the plaza turns over. Most in-line shop space in well-located community centers trades in the $2.75 to $4.00 band.
Those are asking numbers, not closing numbers. The gap between the two is where our work happens, and in Orange it typically shows up as free rent during buildout, a tenant improvement contribution, or a base year of concessions rather than a headline rent cut. Vacancy across Orange's retail inventory has held in the mid-single digits — call it 5 to 6 percent — which keeps landlords disciplined on face rent but leaves room to negotiate on terms.
- OrangeTypical asking range
- Top spacesBest corners and endcaps
- Old Towne Orange
- Tustin Street
- Chapman Avenue
- The Village at Orange
- Rent + NNNWhat you actually pay
Asking rents quoted in this guide, before NNN unless marked. Real deals land anywhere in the range depending on the space, the term and your credit.
- First year
- $121,200
- Five-year lease
- $634K
Sales needed for a coffee shop: $866K to $1.35M a year
Below the typical sales range for this use, so rent would be a modest share of sales.
Occupancy cost targets (9% to 14% of sales for this use) and sales ranges are the benchmarks we use to frame Orange County small-shop deals. A starting point for a conversation, not an underwriting.
01Top of range
Old Towne Orange
The Plaza at Chapman Ave and Glassell St
A large historic district around the Plaza. Small older buildings, thin turnover, and the city's top rents.
$4.50 to $5.50 / SF / mo
- Independent Restaurants
- Specialty Boutiques
- Coffee
02Top of range
The Outlets at Orange
The City Drive near the 5 and 22
Entertainment and value-retail node leased through center ownership, next to the UCI Medical Center district.
- Experiential Retail
- Food
- Medical-Adjacent Services
03Mid-range
Tustin Street
Tustin St from Katella Ave to Chapman Ave
The city's main north-south strip corridor, where most day-to-day leasing happens.
$2.75 to $4.00 / SF / mo
- Fitness
- Quick-Service Food
- Medical and Dental
04Lower rents
Chapman Avenue
Chapman Ave from Chapman University east toward the 55
Student-oriented food and services near campus, with grocery-anchored community retail farther east.
$2.25 to $3.50 / SF / mo
- Coffee
- Casual Food
- Grocery-Anchored Retail
05Lower rents
The Village at Orange
Tustin St and Lincoln Ave
A regional center shifting its tenant mix toward service, food, and experiential uses.
$2.25 to $3.50 / SF / mo
- Service Retail
- Food
- Experiential Uses
The Outlets at Orange and the City Drive corridor
West of the 5 and 22 interchange, The Outlets at Orange — the former Block at Orange — anchors a high-traffic entertainment and value-retail node that includes a multiplex, food, and big-format tenants. Space here leases through the center's ownership rather than on the open market, and terms lean toward experiential, food, and national credit tenants. Along The City Drive and the surrounding UCI Medical Center district, ground-floor retail and medical-adjacent suites draw steady demand from healthcare-support services, pharmacy, and quick-serve food serving hospital staff and patients.
Rents in this corridor vary widely by format, but freestanding pads and endcaps with drive-thru potential command a strong premium given how scarce they are across north Orange County. Parking load is the constant negotiation point near the medical campus, where daytime demand runs high; we cover the math in our guide to retail parking ratios, which matters as much as rent when a use generates heavy midday traffic.
Tustin Street and the north Orange corridors
Tustin Street is the workhorse retail corridor of Orange — a long north-south spine of community and neighborhood centers running from Katella down toward Chapman. This is where most day-to-day leasing happens: fitness, quick-serve and fast-casual food, medical and dental, salons and services, and the occasional junior anchor. In-line shop space here generally asks $2.75 to $4.00 per square foot NNN depending on the center's anchor, visibility, and parking. Endcaps with a drive-thru or strong pylon presence carry a premium.
Nearby, the Katella Avenue corridor and the pockets around the Village at Orange feed a similar tenant mix with slightly softer rents in the older strip product. For a service or fitness tenant, the win on Tustin Street is usually signage and access rather than the marquee address, so we push hard on visibility and monument rights during the letter of intent stage.
138,266residents
45,329households
3.05people per household
U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates. Refreshed automatically when new releases come out.
Chapman Avenue, the Village, and neighborhood centers
Chapman Avenue runs the width of the city and threads past Chapman University, the Plaza, and a string of neighborhood centers. The university influence around Old Towne supports coffee, casual food, and service concepts catering to students and faculty, while the eastern stretch toward the 55 is more traditional grocery-anchored and community retail. The Village at Orange, a regional center off Tustin and Meats, continues to reposition its tenant mix toward service, food, and experiential uses as enclosed-mall footprints evolve.
Neighborhood-center rents across these pockets generally hold in the $2.25 to $3.50 NNN range, with grocery-anchored centers on the higher side because of the co-tenancy draw. A tenant leasing next to an anchor should understand how that anchor protects — or exposes — their traffic, which is why we walk clients through co-tenancy protections before signing in any anchored center.
What do tenants pay beyond base rent in Orange?
Base rent is only part of the monthly check. Triple-net charges — common area maintenance, property taxes, and insurance — typically add $0.85 to $1.75 per square foot per month in Orange centers, with older strips at the low end and newer, amenity-rich centers at the high end. On a 2,000-square-foot suite, that difference alone is more than $20,000 a year, so the NNN line deserves as much scrutiny as the base rate.
Tenants weighing a full-service or modified-gross deal against a triple-net one should read our explainer on the difference between gross and NNN leases, because the structure changes not just the number but who carries the risk of rising taxes and operating costs. Orange's retail stock skews older, which means Proposition 13 reassessments on a recent sale can push property-tax pass-throughs up sharply mid-term — a detail we flag during due diligence. The City of Orange's demographic base supports this demand: the U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts for Orange put the population near 140,000 with a median household income above the county median, a profile that keeps daily-needs and service retail well-occupied.
Each dot is one of our city guides. Hover or tap to compare, click to open that guide. Figures are the asking ranges quoted in each guide.
How we help tenants lease Orange retail space
Our approach in Orange starts with matching the corridor to the concept before we ever pull a rent comp. A destination restaurant belongs on or near the Plaza and should budget for the premium and the wait; a service or fitness tenant is usually better served by the visibility and parking of Tustin Street at two-thirds the rent. Once the target corridor is set, we build a shortlist, tour efficiently, and structure the letter of intent to protect what matters — buildout time, tenant improvement dollars, signage, and exit flexibility. We also help tenants weigh coastal-versus-inland tradeoffs across the county in our Orange County trade-area comparison when Orange is one option among several.
If you are searching for Orange retail space for lease — whether it is a first restaurant on the Circle, a service suite on Tustin Street, or a pad near the medical district — we would welcome the conversation. Call or text us at 425-233-0769 or email leasing@digitalre.com, and we will map the right corridor, rent range, and lease structure to your business.
