Irvine-based LBA Realty has splashed out nearly $168 million on industrial deals outside of Orange County over the past month, in Los Angeles, Pennsylvania, Florida and the Pacific Northwest, according to local news reports.
In the most expensive acquisition, the privately held investor and developer, whose best-known area property is the Park Place mixed-use campus near John Wayne Airport in Irvine, paid a reported $57.8 million for the Los Angeles Food Center, a 266,400-square-foot cold-storage facility in Vernon.
The property is on 10.6 acres next to the Alameda Corridor, the 20-mile freight rail cargo expressway linking downtown Los Angeles to the L.A. and Long Beach ports. The facility is a couple of miles south of downtown L.A.
The seller was a venture between Commerce-based real estate developer Dedeaux Properties and Hartford, Conn.-based investment manager Barings Real Estate, according to a report in our sister publication, the Los Angeles Business Journal.
The property sold for about $217 per square foot, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
On the other side of the country, LBA bought two large industrial properties from Sears Holdings Corp. and the struggling retailer’s logistics subsidiary, Innovel Solutions.
It paid just under $43.8 million for a Sears distribution facility in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and $32.2 million for another of the company’s industrial buildings in North Jacksonville, Fla.
The two properties, each estimated to be about 750,000 square feet, will be leased back to Sears and Innovel for the time being, according to local news reports.
It’s not the first time LBA has recently traded with Sears. Last year I reported it paid the retailer about $41 million for a nearly 315,000-square-foot industrial building on Warner Avenue in Santa Ana long used as an outlet center and distribution facility.
Also reported to be closing in the past month are four industrial buildings south of Seattle in King County, Wash. The buildings in the cities of Renton, Tukwila and Kent totaled about 280,000 square feet and sold for a combined $34 million, according to the Puget Sound’s The Registry.
LBA has also reportedly been involved in at least one disposition transaction in recent weeks, selling a three-building office park in Los Angeles County for about $42.5 million. Pacific Concourse is near the intersection of the 105 and 405 freeways in Hawthorne. LBA owned it for about a decade before selling it in March to an affiliate of Beacon Capital Partners.
The company’s biggest current OC project is a creative-office redevelopment a few blocks from the airport at the intersection of Jamboree Road and Michelson Drive. The 2722 Michelson project will total about 155,000 square feet and is being marketed for lease by Bob Thagard and John Griffin with the Irvine office of Cushman & Wakefield Inc.
Columbus-Bound
Seal Beach-based industrial developer Xebec Realty has big plans for a 106-acre plot it bought near Columbus, Ohio.
The company said it will invest about $90 million to develop what it’s calling Groveport Logistics Hub, a four-building speculative project to start this summer, its buildings 120,000 square feet to 160,000 square feet.
The site, near the city’s main airport and one of the country’s largest inland intermodal facilities, also has enough land to hold a 1-million-square-foot build-to-suit facility, according to Xebec.
The developer, which also has offices in Texas and L.A., is no stranger to large-scale industrial developments. It’s working with Newport Beach-based CT Realty and others to develop a nearly 530-acre inland site in Texas called Southpark Logistics Park for an estimated $500 million.
