CT Realty is moving ahead on a $25 million industrial project in Riverside in the first deal the Aliso Viejo-based developer has made with a large institutional investor it recently partnered with.
The company, an active buyer of existing industrial projects in the Inland Empire in the past few years, recently completed the purchase of a vacant 13.1-acre parcel in the 1,400-acre Sycamore Canyon Business Park in Riverside.
The land is slated to hold a five-building industrial development totaling 205,000 square feet. The buildings will range from 35,000 square feet to 65,000 square feet and will be available for sale starting in the fourth quarter of 2015.
They’ll be the first ground-up industrial buildings constructed in the business park since 2008, according to CT Realty.
The site is one of the few remaining parcels available for industrial development in the business park, according to Keith Ross, executive vice president of development for the company.
“Land for new, ground-up industrial properties is becoming increasingly scarce in Southern California overall, but especially in Riverside,” said Ross, who previously ran Irvine-based developer Centra Realty Corp.
The purchase is the first made by CT Realty in a joint venture with Madison, N.J.-based Prudential Real Estate Investors. The two companies recently formed a $120 million partnership that will focus on development of industrial buildings for sale in Southern California.
The development push marks a change in strategy for CT Realty. The region’s industrial market “returned quickly,” James “Watty” Watson, CT Realty’s chief executive, told the Business Journal last month.
“We’ve had to move from being an opportunistic (buyer) to developing ground-up buildings” and buying fully leased buildings, he said.
CT Realty and Prudential said they acquired the Riverside land “from a major financial institution” for an undisclosed sum.
Santa Ana Sale
Mauna Loa Garden Apartments, a 60-unit rental community in Santa Ana, has traded hands.
CW Santa Ana 2014 LLC, an entity affiliated with Newport Beach-based Clearwater Communities, bought the complex this month.
HBKR Investments LLC in Santa Ana sold the 72,000-square-foot complex.
Terms of the sale weren’t immediately disclosed, but the buyer got a $7.2 million loan from Opus Bank to fund the deal, according to property records. That works out to about $120,000 in debt per unit for the garden-style apartment complex, which is just off the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway near Grand Avenue.
The property, at 1311 Washington Place, is on the opposite side of the freeway from the Orange County Register’s headquarters.
Clearwater Communities is a real estate developer whose chief executive, Dan Kassel, previously ran Granite Homes. The company said it has a strategic alliance with Santa Monica-based real estate developer Watt Cos.
Shopoff in SD
Irvine-based Shopoff Realty Investments said it has paid about $11.1 million for an office in Mission Valley in San Diego.
The real estate company, previously known as the Shopoff Group, recently closed on the purchase of 2650 Camino Del Rio N., a 71,450-square-foot office building near the intersection of the 805 and 8 freeways.
The building traded hands for $156 per square foot, “which is well below market comparables, which average nearly $200 per foot,” said William Shopoff, the investor’s chief executive.
The building is about 75% leased compared to the 92% average occupancy rate in Mission Valley’s office market.
Shopoff said his company plans to renovate the three-story office, which was sold by Terra Enterprises of Los Angeles.
Roseville-based Palmer Capital Inc. said it helped broker the deal and that it financed the deal for Shopoff Realty, whose big project in Orange County is the Uptown Newport development on Jamboree Road.
Shopoff is proceeding with a 460-unit apartment complex on the 25-acre Newport Beach site in a venture with San Juan Capistrano-based Picerne Group.
The company is also working to sell a 2.7-acre parcel at a site next to the 4000 MacArthur office complex to a homebuilder or developer for construction of townhouses or condominiums.
