A 17-building business park next to the Los Alamitos Race Course has traded hands for $128.5 million, in the priciest industrial transaction in Orange County this year.
Newport Beach-based Alere Property Group LLC recently completed the buy of the 685,588-square-foot Los Alamitos Corporate Center, a collection of industrial buildings just off Cerritos Avenue that are on 37 acres.
The buildings, ranging in size from 11,400 to 134,200 square feet, sold for about $187 per square foot.
They were sold by a venture backed by Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co.
The deal was brokered by CBRE Group Inc.’s Barbara Perrier, Darla Longo, Brett Hartzell, Rebecca Perlmutter Finkel, Eric Cox, and Laird Perkins.
The buildings were about 98% occupied at the time of sale, including 82 tenants such as Fiducial and Eco Water Systems.
$180M in 8 Months
The Los Alamitos deal adds to a string of dealmaking in the area for Alere, a privately held investor that has a portfolio largely based in Southern California; it says those buildings are worth about $2.7 billion.
It now has about 3.3 million square feet in OC; it has spent about $180 million over the last eight months in the area.
Other deals in OC of late include an $11.4 million buy of a Tustin industrial warehouse building running 56,190 square feet, and the $22 million buy of a three-building industrial business park in Orange.
In terms of the latest purchase, “we saw this acquisition as an opportunity because there has been virtually no new development of multitenant industrial in the last 10 years in Southern California and we don’t see any coming in the foreseeable future,” said Alan Carmichael, vice president of investments and finance at Alere.
Alere’s buy bests the $123.7 million purchase of a collection of three newly built buildings at Fullerton’s Beckman Business Center, a deal completed around the start of the year that had been tops locally in total price for an industrial sale.
The Beckman buildings, bought vacant by Prologis Inc., sold for about $186 per square foot, about the same as Alere’s buy of the largely full Los Alamitos buildings.
“Los Alamitos is poised to do extremely well going forward because of its proximity to the local freeways, great nearby amenities and ease of connections to all points in Orange County and Los Angeles,” Carmichael said.
More dealmaking in the area is a possibility, he said.
“We are continuing to target any industrial properties that come online in Orange County and Los Angeles,” said Carmichael.
Horse Track Adjacent
The industrial park sits to the immediate west of OC’s main horse track, which despite the Los Alamitos name is located in Cypress.
Other nearby properties include a new housing project geared at residents 55 or older from William Lyon Homes and the sprawling Cottonwood Church campus along Katella Avenue.
“This was a high target acquisition for Alere due to its location in an infill market and its stable cash flow from historically strong tenancy,” CBRE’s Perrier said.
The OC industrial market, running nearly 233 million square feet, has one of the lowest rates in the nation—just 3.4%—according to a midyear market report from brokerage Voit Real Estate.
Los Alamitos’ industrial base runs 95 buildings and 2.3 million square feet, and had less than 1% vacancy at the end of June, according to Voit’s data.
