COMMERCIAL
It’s been a busy year for Irvine’s Bixby Land Co.
The real estate investor and developer ramped up its pace of acquisitions in a big way this year, buying more than $600 million of properties, primarily office and industrial space in Orange County, Silicon Valley and Phoenix.
In 2006,when Bixby brought on Chief Executive Bill Halford,the company made less than $100 million in acquisitions.
The company now counts a portfolio of more than 50 properties, including the 11-building local portfolio it bought from Maguire Properties Inc. in April. Halford says Bixby’s OC holdings are expected to be a long-term investment and are likely to be held for seven to 10 years.
Since the Maguire deal closed, Bixby’s been turning more of its attention to the Silicon Valley. In its fourth big deal in the area, in early December it bought a two-building, office and research and development campus in Santa Clara, totaling 118,400 square feet. The property sold for $36.4 million.
The buildings are leased by Applied Materials Inc. through mid-2009, although local reports say the buildings aren’t being occupied by the company.
More deals in the area are likely. Bixby just signed a venture with the real estate investment arm of Investcorp to buy office and research and development buildings in Silicon Valley.
Investcorp counts about $5 billion in assets. It has offices in New York, London and Bahrain, and opened an office in Los Angeles in July.
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The Mart: four big leases keep warehouses full |
Mile of Tile Leases
Irvine’s Sares-Regis Group said its property management division just handled nearly $5 million of lease transactions for four stores it manages in Anaheim’s Mile of Tile district.
The deals run from three to seven years, and are for showroom and warehouse space in The Mart, an 182,000-square-foot stretch of buildings along State College Boulevard and Winston Road.
In the biggest lease, Cabinet Factories Co. signed a five-year, $1.5-million lease for 40,000 square feet of space at 2050 Winston Road. The tenant was represented by Darin McDonald of Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services.
Also, American Floors renewed a $1.1 million lease for 10,650 square feet of space at 1380 State College Blvd. The tenant was represented by Peter Loh of Re/Max. Ceramica Tile Pour La Maison represented itself in a $1 million lease of 15,200 square feet of space at 1390 State College Blvd., while Sweet Factory represented itself in a three-year, $1 million lease of 40,000 square feet of space at 2000 Winston Road.
The latest batch of leases keeps The Mart fully occupied, according to Michael Wood, director of leasing for Sares-Regis Group’s Commercial Property Management Services Division.
Pack-Rat in OC
Another portable storage company is looking to expand into OC, and has signed a pair of leases for industrial space.
The latest company grabbing a big chunk of local warehouse space is Washington-based 1-800-Pack-Rat LLC. WM Pack-Rat of California LLC, a Houston-based franchise of the company, just signed two five-year leases in the area, totaling about 70,000 square feet.
The leases include 40,000 square feet of space at 7391 Heil Ave. in Huntington Beach and 29,000 square feet at 449 Freedom Ave. in Orange. The two properties will be used as warehouses for the company’s portable storage containers. They will be the company’s first locations in the region.
John Bowman, senior managing director of Charles Dunn Co.’s Long Beach office, represented WM Pack-Rat in the deal. Morgan Holdings LLC, the landlord of the 160,000-square-foot Huntington Beach property, was represented by Colliers International. TMT Nelson Freedom, the landlord of the Orange property, represented itself.
Pack-Rat is the second big portable storage company to sign a big lease here in recent months.
In November, Pods of Los Angeles LLC signed a six-year lease for 122,600 square feet at the newly renovated Crossroads Anaheim facility on North Kraemer Boulevard. It’ll use the distribution space as its main OC storage center facility, after moving from a smaller space in Fullerton.
RREEF Hires
A division of San Francisco-based RREEF Funds LLC has hired a local to head up its Southern California acquisitions activity.
RREEF North America this month named Rick Putnam as the managing director of its acquisitions group. He’ll be based in RREEF’s Costa Mesa office and will be responsible for acquiring office, industrial and retail properties in Orange County and Los Angeles.
Putnam previously was an executive director with Cushman & Wakefield Inc.’s capital markets group. Prior to that, he was with a similar group at Trammell Crow Co.
