Albertson’s Inc. is in escrow to acquire the 131,000-square-foot former Hewlett-Packard office building in Fullerton, where the supermarket chain will relocate its Western regional offices and more than 400 jobs from Buena Park.
The move is a result of Albertson’s merger with American Stores Co., the parent of Lucky Food Stores, said George Ray, senior real estate manager with Albertson’s Inc.
“It’s part of the merger-related synergies,” he said. “We have consolidated distribution systems and the Buena Park facility is no longer needed.”
That 600,000-square-foot office and distribution complex will be sold, he added.
Albertson’s has major distribution centers in Irvine, Brea and La Habra. The move of mostly management and administrative personnel to the two-story office building in Fullerton places them closer to the Brea and La Habra centers, Ray said.
Alberston’s will pay Hewlett-Packard about $10 million for the Fullerton office building, and expects to close escrow in October. The company will spend about $2 million on improvements before formally taking occupancy in the February, a move that the company had hoped to make sooner but likely will be delayed by the holiday season and the end of the quarter.
Hewlett-Packard moved its operations from the Fullerton facility to the Stadium Crossings office building at State College Boulevard and Katella Avenue in Anaheim, across from Edison International Field and near Disneyland. Hewlett-Packard signed a 10-year, $16 million lease for roughly 60,000 square feet, occupying a portion of the second floor and the entire third and fourth floors of that building.
Albertson’s Buena Park facility includes more than 500,000 square feet of distribution space and 100,000 square feet of office space. The distribution operations that were being handled by that facility will be diverted to the company’s three other OC centers.
Jack McNutt of Grubb & Ellis represented Albertson’s. Rick Warner, Steve Batcheller and Ben Seybold from CB Richard Ellis’ Anaheim office and Darla Longo from CB Richard Ellis’ Ontario office represented Hewlett-Packard. n
