Irvine’s Sares-Regis Group has paid $47 million for 100 acres near Ontario International Airport, one of the last big parcels in the western Inland Empire.
Sares-Regis plans to build warehouses and buildings for light manufacturing on the site.
“We’ve developed a lot of property in that area, and we’re going to do more of the same,” said Peter Rooney, president of acquisitions for Sares-Regis’ commercial investment division.
Sares-Regis develops industrial and office parks, apartments and condominiums. The company, which counts yearly revenue of about $430 million, has built warehouses and smaller industrial buildings in nearby Rialto and Fontana.
It and other Orange County developers pushed east as land became harder to come by on this side of the mountains.
Now land is growing scarce in parts of the Inland Empire, pushing big developments further into the desert.
The Sares-Regis land, southeast of the Ontario airport near Interstates 10 and 15, has its issues.
The site is home to a federally protected bug, the Delhi Sands Flower-Loving Fly. It’s also home to burrowing owls, which are protected by the state.
The environmental issues could have scared off other bidders on the land, said Chuck Belden of the Ontario office of real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield Inc.
Ascenzi is a staff writer with The Business Press in Ontario.
For more on this story, see the April 17 edition of the Business Journal.
