Amazon has confirmed plans to open a distribution center hub in Mission Viejo, its second big Orange County lease in a month.
The e-commerce giant said it struck a deal to lease all of a 322,000-square-foot building for what it calls a “California Delivery Station,” designed to improve last-mile delivery capabilities in South OC.
A deal was rumored to be in the works the past month; the Business Journal reported on industry chatter for the transaction—the largest new industrial lease south of Irvine in OC this year—in the Oct. 21 print edition.
Amazon’s new local hub will open next year.
It sits on 27 acres at 25725 Jeronimo, about a mile north of the San Diego (5) Freeway at a site previously home to Unisys Corp.’s technology division.
The industrial building is owned by a Newport Beach entity affiliated with real estate investor and coin collector John Saunders.
The site currently serves as a recreational vehicle storage facility, holding more than 1,000 RVs and 600 self-storage units.
The 10-year lease begins next April, according to Saunders, who tells the Business Journal he hopes to relocate the current users to another storage facility his company owns in Irvine.
Former RV Depot
The deal adds another last-mile distribution facility to service Amazon’s Orange County and other Southern California customers.
Amazon Logistics has said that the new delivery station will create hundreds of part-time and full-time jobs starting at $15 per hour.
The new deal pushes Amazon’s local distribution space to about 1.2 million square feet, with a bulk of that added in the past year and a half.
That total pales in comparison to the Inland Empire, where it counts some 15 million square feet of distribution space.
It’s Amazon’s second area deal this year, following a move last month for its largest-ever lease in Orange County.
Amazon inked a 414,309-square-foot deal for a recently renovated industrial building in Santa Ana, the second largest OC industrial lease in the third quarter by square footage (see listing, page 40).
The Business Journal first reported that the company will take over all of 515 E. Dyer, a warehouse facility a few blocks from the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway and about 4 miles from John Wayne Airport.
The 18-acre site is owned by the local office of Houston-based Hines, which paid about $57 million for the building near the end of 2017, and has subsequently spent millions more upgrading it.
Amazon struck its first notable industrial deal in Orange County in 2016 when it snapped up nearly half of Irvine Crossings, a 395,673-square-foot data center and industrial property on Von Karman Avenue, a little more than a mile from the airport.
The following year, Amazon inked a deal to take up all of 6400 Valley View St., a 238,000-square-foot building in Buena Park.
“There is so much demand coming out of Orange County, and Amazon’s expansion should benefit the entire region,” Saunders told the Business Journal.
