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Western Realco Buys 2nd Fullerton Development Site

Western Realco has added another property in Fullerton—and another site with ties to medical testing company Beckman Coulter Inc.—to its industrial development pipeline.

The Newport Beach-based developer, one of Orange County’s largest builders of industrial facilities in the past few years, with nearly 1.2 million square feet of new buildings, last month completed the purchase of a nearly 8-acre site at 4150 N. Palm St. in Fullerton.

The site is just off Imperial Highway and about three miles west of the Orange (57) Freeway. It holds an 89,000-square-foot industrial building and sold for a little under $11.8 million, according to CoStar records.

Western Realco bought the property in a partnership with AEW Capital Management of Los Angeles. Irvine-based LBA Realty sold the site, which it had owned since 2007.

The developer plans to build an industrial business park there and is in the process of demolishing the existing building.

The size of the development hasn’t been disclosed, but in theory it could approach roughly 175,000 square feet based on the acreage.

Western Realco is working with the city of Fullerton to design the business park, according to brokers with the Orange office of CBRE Group Inc. who worked on the sale.

CBRE’s Sean Ward, Ben Seybold and Keith Greer represented the buyers, and LBA Realty was represented by John Harty and Mike Coppin with the Irvine office of DTZ.

The project site is a few blocks east of Western Realco’s largest area asset, the former Fullerton headquarters of Beckman Coulter.

A few weeks before buying the Palm Street property, Western Realco and partner Penwood Real Estate Investment Management of Hartford, Conn., completed the purchase of a majority of the 44-acre former Beckman campus on Harbor Boulevard between Imperial Highway and Lambert Road.

That Beckman Coulter site will be redeveloped into a multibuilding business park that could run close to 900,000 square feet.

Western Realco and Penwood paid $42 million, or about $1.4 million an acre, for the first 30 acres of the site, according to CoStar records. They’ll close on the remaining 14 acres early next year.

The larger site has been vacant since 2009, when Beckman, a maker of medical testing and research equipment, moved its headquarters to Brea.

Beckman also occupied the 89,000-square-foot Palm Street facility for a few years under a short-term lease after vacating its headquarters. The building was vacant at the time of its sale to Western Realco and AEW.

Western Realco also owns a 10-acre site in Brea that previously held a data center built in 1980 by Beckman Coulter to support its Brea operations.

The center was demolished this year by Western Realco, which is planning to build a 216,000-square-foot industrial building there.

The developer said it’s on the lookout for more sites to redevelop.

“We will continue to seek value-add industrial opportunities, including land for speculative development and existing buildings with turn-around potential, to take advantage of strengthening fundamentals in Southern California,” Jeremy Mape, Western Realco’s director of acquisitions, said in a statement.

Heslin Doubles Up

Heslin Holdings Inc., a Laguna Hills-based real estate investor and developer, has shed its second area retail property in less than a month to free up cash for other opportunities.

The privately owned commercial firm recently completed the sale of 7910 Katella Ave., an 81,000-square-foot retail property at the intersection of Beach Boulevard and Katella Avenue in Stanton.

Seattle-based insurer Safeco Corp. paid $18.5 million, or about $228 per square foot, for the building, which holds a Food 4 Less.

It’s the second area deal between Heslin and Safeco since October. Last month Safeco paid $22.5 million for another Food 4 Less-anchored site at 914 W. Orangethorpe Ave. in Fullerton.

The two sales were “pursued to free up capital for assets that better fit our opportunistic investment strategy,” John Belanich, Heslin principal and chief financial officer, said in a statement.

The company said it’s looking to buy retail, industrial, apartment and hotel properties.

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Mark Mueller
Mark Mueller
Mark is the Editor-in-Chief of the Orange County Business Journal, one of the premier regional business newspapers in the country. He’s the fifth person to hold the editor’s position in the paper’s long history. He oversees a staff of about 15 people. The OCBJ is considered a must-read for area business executives. The print edition of the paper is the primary source of local news for most of the Business Journal’s subscribers, which includes most of OC’s major corporate and community players. Mark’s been with the paper since 2005, and long served as the real estate reporter for the paper, breaking hundreds of commercial and residential real estate stories. He took on the editor’s position in 2018.
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