Placentia-based Galleria Inc., an importer of lawn, garden and other household products, is making big waves in the industrial market again.
Four years ago, the company bought a 281,000-square-foot storage and distribution building in Anaheim, at a former campus of Minneapolis-based Medtronic Inc. The reported $20 million deal doubled Galleria’s space and was one of the largest building sales by square footage in 2002.
Now, the growing company is making an even bigger expansion,and it is looking outside Orange County for space.
Galleria just closed on a 715,000-square-foot warehouse in Rialto, according to brokers. The Inland Empire property is part of Irvine-based Sares-Regis Group Inc.’s Rialto Commerce Center, a two-building, 1.1 million-square-foot complex. The buildings were developed with RREEF Funds LLC.
Terms of the sale weren’t disclosed. Sares-Regis officials have said that the value for the two buildings is $67 million.
Galleria is keeping its headquarters in OC and has no plans to move, according to Brad Bierbaum, senior vice president for the Anaheim-based office of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., who helped negotiate the deal for Galleria.
The company has been growing and needed more space to manage its distribution operations, he said.
In a familiar refrain for OC businesses looking to expand their warehouse operations, the space Galleria was looking for couldn’t be found within the county, according to Bierbaum. Local developers have focused on smaller for-sale properties, which they say is the only way to make money with high land costs.
Another deal could be on the way. Galleria is looking at buying another building near Rialto, in the 200,000-square-foot range, according to Mike Wolfe, a broker for the Ontario office of Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services Inc., which was marketing the Sares-Regis property.
To finance the Rialto purchase, Galleria re-cently sold the Anaheim warehouse it bought in 2002 to Sares-Regis,at a healthy profit.
Sares-Regis paid $28.5 million for the 281,548-square-foot industrial building at 4633 E. La Palma Ave. Bierbaum, Gary Stache, and Pat Scruggs of CB Richard Ellis represented both parties in the transaction.
Galleria is leasing the space back from Sares-Regis.
Werdin Adds Partner, Project
Local developer Russell Werdin has a new partner, and a new office project in Corona.
Werdin, president of Newport Beach-based Werdin Corp., was one of the first local companies to embrace smaller, for sale office condo projects here in OC.
In his latest project, Werdin has turned to Corona, where office vacancy rates are less than 2.5%. He is partnering with Carter Ewing, owner of Newport Beach-based retail developer Howser Ewing Cos., and a former development partner with the Koll Co.
The new venture, Werdin-Ewing LLC, recently bought eight acres of vacant land in Corona. The plan is to break ground in October on a 12-building office project, called the Corona Corporate Centre.
The $35 million development will consist of single- and two-story buildings ranging in size from 1,500 square feet to 22,600 square feet. The buildings will be offered for sale.
Kevin Turner, Michael Hartel and Michael McCrary, senior vice presidents with Colliers International’s Irvine and Ontario offices, will market the properties.
Despite a cooling in Corona’s housing and construction markets, there still are 11,000 homes under construction from Corona south to Murrieta. An additional 14,000 homes are being built from the Riverside (91) Freeway north to Interstate 15, according to Turner.
“That’s potentially 20,000 people that are looking for a shorter commute,” Turner said.
The median Corona home price now is more than $620,000.
Pricing or a final site plan at the development aren’t expected to be completed for another month. The company already is getting offers, according to Werdin.
This is his second big project in as many months.
In July, Werdin announced a new, 66,472-square-foot project in Tustin, being developed with Newport Beach’s Saunders Properties. It is one of the first for-sale office condo projects near the Tustin Legacy housing and retail development.
Big declines in the number of homes sold have been seen throughout 2006, even as prices have continued to nudge upward.
Now, it appears as though sellers are beginning to come to terms with the reduced demand.
An increasing number of sellers have begun pulling their homes off the market this month, according to data from the Aliso Viejo-based office of Re-Max Real Estate Services.
As of Aug. 10, OC’s home inventory dropped to 6.81 months from 7.04 months two weeks prior.
Four weeks earlier, inventory was at 7.2 months.
The drop is due to a lack of new listings, and frustration by existing “unrealistic” sellers who have taken their homes off the market amid the slow pace of sales.
There now are 15,875 homes on the market in OC, Re-Max said.
The number of homes sold in the county dropped 36% to 2,779 in July, versus a year ago, according to La Jolla-based market tracker DataQuick Information Systems, a unit of Canada’s MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates.
