The head of Panattoni Development Co.’s investment and development activities in Orange County and the Inland Empire has left the Newport Beach-based real estate company to start his own venture.
Steve Batcheller, a partner at Panattoni who had headed up the developer’s local operations for the past nine years, recently started his own firm, Batcheller Equities Inc.
The Newport Beach-based startup plans to invest in existing industrial and office properties that have value-add opportunities, and also will pursue ground-up development, Batcheller said.
The company’s initial focus will be on acquisitions and development in Southern California, with future growth planned in other western markets, he said.
“It’s something I had been exploring for a few months,” Batcheller said.
The new venture has a couple of properties tied up for initial investments, which are expected to close in the next few months, he said.
Panattoni is one of the country’s largest privately held industrial developers, and its Southern California operations are responsible for more than 20 million square feet of space built, sold and leased over the past decade.
The company has been the largest developer in Orange County the past two years on a square footage basis, thanks to its Anaheim Concourse, a multibuilding industrial project being constructed on land that once served as a campus of aerospace giant Boeing Co.
Panattoni bought the land more than eight years ago, following Boeing’s departure from its longtime campus in northeast Anaheim, but held off groundbreaking for several years after the last recession.
“It’s taken a while,” Batcheller said.
New development at the 80-acre project began in earnest in early 2014.
The nearly 1.4-million-square-foot Concourse project—a mix of for-sale and for-lease properties—is the largest industrial project built in Orange County in over a decade.
The 14-building project is nearing completion, with a bulk of the space now spoken for. Recent deals there include a 207,000-square-foot lease by Anaheim-based food packaging company L&L Foods and a 162,000-square-foot lease by Walt Disney Co., which will use the new facility to support its local theme park and resort operations.
Only two buildings, running about 132,000 square feet and 106,000 square feet, are still available for lease at the project, according to Brad Bierbaum, a senior vice president with CBRE Group Inc. who has been leasing and selling buildings at Anaheim Concourse.
Batcheller said he felt now is a good time to start his venture because many of Panattoni’s local projects are wrapping up. He said he’ll still be involved in a few Panatonni deals that are expected to close in the next couple of months.
Jacob LeBlanc, senior development manager at Panattoni, has been named a partner at the company and will take over from Batcheller.
LeBlanc “has made significant contributions to Panatonni, playing instrumental roles in executing numerous high-profile developments for the company,” said Chief Executive Adon Panattoni in a statement.
The company’s OC and Inland Empire office has been one its most profitable divisions recently, according to Adon Panattoni.
Fundraising
Batcheller, who joined Panatonni after a lengthy brokerage career at CBRE, said he’s in the middle of fundraising for his new venture.
The firm will employ a three-pronged approach to acquisitions and development, with a high-net-worth private equity fund for smaller ventures, programmatic institutional capital funding for larger ventures, and the ability to provide fee-based acquisition, entitlement, development and property management services to clients and investment partners, he said.
Batcheller Equities is headquartered in the same offices as Newport Beach-based Shubin Nadal Realty Investors, another investment and development company, whose recent local projects have included the Irvine creative office headquarters of apparel company Fox Head Inc.
The two companies are discussing possible ventures together, but nothing has been finalized, Batcheller said.
