Goodman North America, one of the country’s largest industrial developers over the past six years, has made its first reported acquisition in Orange County, an existing property in Anaheim near the Santa Ana (5) and Riverside (91) freeways interchange.
A redevelopment of the roughly 12-acre site is possible, according to the buyer’s website.
Goodman, whose operations are based in Irvine, recently closed on the purchase of an industrial property at 1256 Magnolia Ave., whose existing two buildings total about 143,000 square feet.
The 1970s-era building is south of the (5) Freeway; CoStar Group Inc. records show the building as fully occupied, but Goodman’s website lists the property—now known as Goodman Industrial Center Anaheim—as available as of April.
A site plan on Goodman’s website suggests that the existing properties could be knocked down to make way for a two-building build-to-suit project totaling a little more than 244,000 square feet.
The build-to-suit project would include a 205,860-square-foot building, as well as a 38,399-square-foot building, according to the plans.
Goodman officials did not respond to calls seeking comment on the property.
Goodman paid about $36 million for the Magnolia Avenue property, or about $250 per square foot, according to property records.
It was sold by a Beverly Hills-based entity with ties to that city’s AVG Partners, records show.
It’s among the largest single-building industrial sales in Orange County over the past quarter.
Birtcher Ties
The existing Magnolia property and the proposed development fall on the small side for Goodman, whose U.S. projects often run 500,000 square feet and larger and cater to large logistics center users like Amazon.
Its U.S. operations have been in overdrive the past few years; it has a development pipeline in excess of $2.7 billion, which will result in about 15.8 million square feet of new space when fully built, according to company marketing materials.
Much of its West Coast development is centered in the Inland Empire.
Goodman’s U.S. development is financially backed in part through a venture with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
The company is a unit of Australia-based Goodman Group, one of the world’s largest industrial developers.
It started its North American subsidiary in 2012 and was known as Goodman Birtcher when it was headed by Brandon ‘Brandy’ Birtcher, a longtime Orange County commercial real estate developer.
He left the company two years ago to restart his family-run industrial development business, Birtcher Development LLC.
Goodman North America is now run by Chief Executive Anthony Rozic, and its development efforts are led by Shannon Hondl, the company’s chief development officer.
Of note, the Magnolia site is across the street from Brandy Birtcher’s last big industrial development in OC, a 21-acre site that holds the headquarters of Northgate Gonzalez Market, Orange County’s largest grocer targeting Hispanic shoppers.
Birtcher built the 384,000-square-foot industrial property in 2010 for Northgate Gonzalez, which initially leased the building. It was the first large industrial building to go up in OC after the Great Recession.
In 2012, Northgate took over ownership of the building after paying a reported $45 million for it.
