RESIDENTIAL
A Platinum Triangle apartment complex planned by San Francisco-based BRE Properties Inc. has been put on hold, while the opening of another nearby Anaheim project approaching completion will open a few months later than first expected.
BRE, a real estate investment trust that develops apartments, announced earlier this month that because of tough market conditions it was halting three planned projects on the West Coast, while laying off more than a third of its development staff.
The company, which counts about a dozen Orange County properties, said it doesn’t expect to start building any new projects this year as it slows down its development pipeline.
It opened one apartment project here last year, the 460-unit, $115 million Renaissance at Uptown Orange complex.
BRE didn’t specify which projects were being mothballed, although filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission at the end of the third quarter show three California projects listed as under development by BRE but not yet under construction.
Those projects include Stadium Park II, an apartment project that’s approved for 250 units along East Katella Avenue.
BRE said it incurred more than $23 million in costs on the Stadium Park II development through September.
A time frame for when construction could begin was not disclosed; the company had previously hoped to begin construction as early as mid-2007.
A slowdown in BRE’s development pipeline is likely good news for other local apartment owners.
About 2,900 apartment units in OC are expected to be completed this year, including 1,000 apartments around Anaheim, according to Marcus & Milichap Real Estate Investment Services Inc. That will drive OC vacancy levels up about 1%, to nearly 6% by year’s end, the brokerage predicts.
Five additional apartment communities already under construction by BRE are not affected by this month’s actions, the company said. It said it expects to complete the construction and lease-up of these communities as planned.
One of those five projects also is on Katella, where BRE is moving forward on Park Viridian, a 320-unit complex that was previously known as Stadium Park. The $89.2 million project, once scheduled to open by this summer, is now slated for completion by the end of the year, according to SEC filings.
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Rancho Santa Margarita-based developer StoneCreek Co. said it has completed Claremont Medical Plaza, a 50,000-square-foot medical office building in eastern Los Angeles County.
The two-story building is 85% preleased; its anchor tenant is the Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, which will occupy more than 35,000 square feet in a lease valued at more than $17 million. Tenants are scheduled to move in next month. Irvine-based Ware Malcomb was the project’s architect.
Walton Leases Up
The asset management division of Chicago-based Walton Street Capital LLC recently completed six industrial leases in Anaheim and Garden Grove, totaling more than 200,000 square feet and with a value of nearly $5 million.
The deals accounted for about 40% of the space at the 245,192-square-foot Tower Park industrial park in Anaheim, as well as half of the 252,184-square-foot Garden Grove Industrial Park, according to the Orange office of Voit Commercial Brokerage LP.
Voit’s Louis Tomaselli and Mitch Zehner represented Walton Street’s WCV Commercial Properties in all six leases. They represented the lessees in two of the deals.
The largest lease was in Anaheim, for fastener manufacturer Nylok Corp., part of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. The manufacturer signed a five-year lease on a 33,954-square-foot industrial property at 313 N. Euclid Way. The deal’s for $1.3 million, which translates to monthly rents of about 64 cents per square foot.
At the same complex, at 333 N. Euclid Way, L & L; Foods Inc., a distributor of food supplies and equipment, signed a five-year lease for a 55,175 square-foot building. That deal is valued at $1 million.
In Garden Grove, the largest lease was a $1 million deal, for a 58,000-square-foot property at 7423 Doig Drive. Irvine’s Bax Global Inc., a supply chain management company that is part of Germany’s Deutsche Bahn AG, is leasing the building in a two-year deal.
WCV Commercial Properties, whose local offices are in Newport Beach, counts an industrial portfolio of 19 properties, totaling about 3.3 million square feet. It acquired the warehouses and business parks in 2007 from CalWest Industrial Holdings LLC in a deal valued at about $400 million.
