Prologis Inc., the country’s largest owner of warehouse and distribution properties, has leased two of the three large, newly built buildings it owns at Beckman Business Center, with those deals topping half a million square feet of space.
The San Francisco-based company is the largest owner at the business park, a collection of eight industrial buildings in Fullerton that wrapped construction in late 2018. It was developed by Newport Beach-based Western Realco on a 44-acre site that previously held the headquarters of Beckman Coulter Inc.
Prologis paid $123.7 million near the start of 2019 for close to 663,000 square feet of new product at the development, including a trio of warehouses of varying size. It was the largest industrial purchase in Orange County that year.
The two largest buildings Prologis bought are now accounted for, with recent deals inked by separate distribution companies that are significantly expanding their Orange County presence.
The three buildings owned by Prologis (NYSE: PLD) are the largest properties at the Fullerton project, which range from 42,000 to 309,000 square feet.
Leasing Activity
The transactions represent about 522,000 square feet in leasing activity, the most reported for any industrial landlord since December, when CenterPoint Properties leased its 1.1 million-square-foot Buena Park industrial facility to Unis Co., a Walnut-based fulfillment and transportation provider.
“There’s very little inventory of new, high clear warehouse space, especially in north county,” said Seth Davenport, executive vice president at Voit Real Estate Services, which brokered both deals on behalf of Prologis.
“This project is essentially the only game in town when it comes to meeting that demand.”
Voit also represented Western Realco in several of the sales transactions, which wrapped about a year ago.
All but one building at the center remains to be leased.
310K-SF Lease
The latest and largest lease was for 210 E. Lambert Road, a 309,439-square-foot building at the business park.
Total Transportation inked a six-year deal for the entire property in February.
It’s the first Orange County location for the distribution company, whose La Mirada headquarters on Rosecrans Avenue are a few miles outside OC.
“As the company was expanding, it was looking for a centralized location for its distribution services,” Davenport said.
Total Transportation, a less-than-truckload distribution company that delivers to Southern California companies, is currently working on tenant upgrades, including building out 7,000 square feet of office space.
212K-SF Lease
The other Prologis building was leased closer to the start of the year, when electrical products distribution company OneSource leased the entirety of 4278 N. Harbor.
The 212,202-square-foot deal is an expansion and relocation for OneSource, which is moving from its 141,000-square-foot Garden Grove headquarters.
The company is a division of France-based Sonepar, a business-to-business distributor to electrical equipment makers. OneSource’s main clients are in the construction, industrial and utility sectors, and services Southern California, Hawaii, Arizona and Baja Mexico.
The final Prologis-owned building that has yet to be leased is 4260 N. Harbor, a 141,000-square-foot warehouse facility; another full-building deal is likely, according to brokers.
Wrapping Up
Beckman Business Center was the largest local industrial project to start in about four years.
It sold out last year shortly after it wrapped construction to a total of five owners.
Two of which are owner-users, including A.J. Kirkwood & Associates, an electrical contracting firm based in Tustin, and Achem Industries America Inc., a Cerritos-based maker of tape and other packaging products.
The remaining investors also have been working on leasing efforts, and include Prologis; Bukewihge Properties, a private investor that bought two buildings totaling about 88,000 square feet for $21.1 million, or $241 per square foot; and Laguna Canyon Plaza LLC, which bought the final building last March for $16.5 million.
That brought total sales for the park to $187.6 million.
The entire development’s cost was roughly $130 million, according to Gary Edwards, principal for the privately held developer, who oversaw the project with Jeremy Mape, the company’s director of acquisitions.
The developer bought the site in late 2015 and early 2016 in a pair of transactions, and wrapped construction on the 1 million-square-foot project in December 2018.
