Sares-Regis Group’s massive Douglas Park development site in Long Beach, once a base for the aviation industry, is slowly turning into an automotive hub of sorts.
The Irvine-based developer recently signed Universal Technical Institute, a school for automotive technical career training, to a 15-year lease at a new 137,000-square-foot industrial building going up at the 260-acre masterplanned development next to Long Beach Airport.
The build-to-suit lease agreement with Scottsdale-based Universal Technical Institute, or UTI, is valued at more than $30 million, according to Larry Lukanish, senior vice president in Sares-Regis’ commercial development division.
The facility will provide administration, classroom and lab space for 800 students and 85 instructors.
The flex industrial property will be on 7 acres and include two floors of offices, according to Sares-Regis.
Douglas Park will be UTI’s second location in Southern California. Its Rancho Cucamonga campus can accommodate 3,000 students and 165 instructors.
Sares-Regis bought the Douglas Park site from Chicago-based Boeing Co. in 2012 in three separate transactions. The land could eventually hold nearly 4 million square feet of industrial, office, hotel and retail buildings.
Leasing and sales for the first batch of industrial development, a 667,000-square-foot project called Pacific Pointe, was completed early this year.
Automotive-related companies have taken a shine to the site. A 135,000-square-foot building constructed at Pacific Pointe was previously purchased for $18 million by United Pacific, an automotive restorer and after-market accessories maker that moved its headquarters from Carson to Long Beach.
The largest existing building at Douglas Park is a former Boeing aircraft manufacturing facility that sits on 52 acres.
The 1.1-million-square-foot building was leased last year to Montvale, N.J.-based Mercedes-Benz USA in the largest infill industrial lease in the L.A. area in more than 25 years.
The Long Beach property is being retrofitted for use as a new car-preparation facility and West Coast headquarters for Mercedes-Benz.
Sares-Regis said it is marketing the remaining 100 acres still available for new development at Douglas Park and that it’s attracting interest from local manufactures, medical providers and large office users.
Centerstone Sale
Two restaurant buildings at Centerstone Plaza in Irvine have been sold to a locally based retail investor.
An affiliate of ValueRock Realty Partners, an Irvine-based investor that focuses on retail properties, bought a pair of buildings last month totaling about 12,500 square feet at Centerstone Plaza, a six-building office and retail complex in Irvine at the intersection of Barranca Parkway and Culver Drive.
CoStar Group Inc. records put the purchase price at $9.7 million, or $776 per square foot. A unit of New York Life Real Estate Investors sold the buildings, which are home to an Islands Restaurant and a Mimi’s Cafe.
New York Life Real Estate Investors paid $51 million for Centerstone Plaza about a year ago. The investor remains the owner of the four offices at the complex that total about 147,000 square feet.
Other recent purchases by ValueRock include the $18 million buy of a San Jose retail center that’s anchored by a Target. This year it also became a part owner of The Commons at Aliso Viejo Town Center.
ValueRock is said to own more than 2 million square feet of retail space in the Western U.S.
Northridge Redo
Newport Beach-based Shubin Nadal Realty Investors is planning a major redevelopment of a 44-acre business park it recently purchased in Northridge.
It partnered with New York-based DRA Advisors LLC to buy the 856,000-square-foot Harman International Business Campus, a business park in the San Fernando Valley.
Terms of the deal, made with NewTower Trust Co. of Bethesda, were not disclosed.
The new owners plan a multimillion-dollar repositioning of the site to turn the property into a mixed-use business park featuring creative office, research and development, and retail spaces.
It will be rebranded as “The Campus,” according to Shubin Nadal, which repositions and develops commercial real estate along the West Coast.
The developers undertook a smaller creative-office redevelopment in Irvine last year with Fox Head Inc.’s new headquarters on Armstrong Avenue.
