PCA Aerospace Inc., a Huntington Beach-based manufacturer for the aerospace and defense industries, has sold its headquarters in a sale-leaseback deal.
The 58,867-square-foot property, at 17800 Gothard St., sold for $7.65 million, or about $130 per square foot. The company moved its headquarters to the site in 2006.
The buyer was a private investor based in Santa Barbara.
The sale comes with a 10-year lease for the property, one of three area manufacturing facilities the company uses.
PCA’s other two facilities,a 40,000-square-foot site in Garden Grove, and a 40,000-square-foot site in El Segundo,are leased by the company, according to brokers.
Bob Goodmanson, Pat Scruggs and Gary Stache, from the Newport Beach office of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., represented both parties in the deal.
In January, I wrote about the growing number of local sale-leaseback deals, where an owner sells its building and then leases the space back from the buyer. Many of the property sales are followed a few years down the road by the company’s owners selling off their businesses.
That’s not likely the case for PCA, which was looking more to raise cash and lock in a good lease rate while capitalization rates remain relatively low, according to CB Richard Ellis.
Colliers Promotion
Martin Pupil, who has been heading up tenant representation services at the Irvine office of brokerage Colliers International since September, is getting a bigger area to cover.
Pupil was promoted to senior managing director for the company. Now he’ll lead the brokerage’s Orange County, Inland Empire and High Desert brokerage operations, which totals four offices.
He moved to the area last year from Montreal, where he’d been general manager since 2004.
CIP in Charlotte
Irvine’s CIP Real Estate, a real estate investor and manager, is making headway in its goal of buying up to $200 million in office and industrial assets this year, primarily in the Southeast.
CIP and partner Alex. Brown Realty of Baltimore just bought a portfolio of three business parks in the Charlotte, N.C., area totaling 597,725 square feet of office and warehouse space. The price was $50 million, or about $83 per square foot.
The seller was Charlotte-based Beacon Ventures LLC.
CIP entered the Charlotte and Southeast markets last year. Its first purchase was a $12 million deal with Alex. Brown that was announced in October. The company recently opened an office in Charlotte, led by Jared Rogers, vice president and regional director.
Besides Charlotte, CIP’s other divisional offices are in Anaheim, Ontario and Las Vegas.
There’ve been a number of local developers and investors eyeing properties in the Southeast as of late. Among larger investors, Irvine’s Crown Realty & Development Corp. bought $150 million of area properties in December and plans to invest up to $500 million in the region during 2008.
Also, Newport Beach-based KBS Realty Advisors last week said it made its first deal in Charlotte, paying $26 million for a nearly 500,000-square-foot warehouse.
Last month’s sudden retirement of Stephen Scarborough, the longtime chief executive of homebuilder Standard Pacific Corp., caught a lot of people off guard,including, by most accounts, the company itself.
Scarborough’s departure was announced March 20. His replacement, board member Jeffrey Patterson, was named the same day. Patterson was given four hours to acclimate himself to the position before taking his first conference call with analysts.
“We don’t know if it was the board or Scarborough that was (most) surprised” by the change in leadership, said Vicki Bryan, a senior debt analyst at research firm Gimme Credit, in a report the next day.
Bryan said she was “surprised and concerned” that Standard Pacific didn’t take the time to pursue a more thorough executive search, particularly given the company’s precarious financial situation as of late.
Despite the quick departure, there was enough time for Scarborough,one of OC’s better paid chief executives in recent years,to get a decent retirement agreement. He’s receiving a $1.25 million severance package, along with accelerated vesting of 42,000 shares of restricted stock, and 280,000 shares of stock options. He also gets $109,000 for unused vacation time.
Peterson will receive a base salary of $850,000 per year, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That’s a little less than Scarborough’s base salary, which had included a significant bonus component. At the top of the market in 2005, Scarborough earned $21.5 million.
