Sares Regis Group is starting to take the wraps off its plans to redevelop Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc.’s former North American headquarters in Torrance.
The Irvine-based commercial real estate developer and investor paid a reported $270 million in October for the sprawling, now largely vacant campus next to the 405 Freeway about 18 miles from the Orange-Los Angeles county line.
The deal was one of the biggest commercial property transactions in Southern California last year, and at 117 acres, gives Sares Regis one of the largest chunks of developable property in the region.
Toyota put the property up for sale after announcing in 2014 that it would move from Torrance to Plano, Texas. It had been at the site since the late 1960s.
The move was completed last year.
A large parts and distribution center in the middle of the property that wasn’t part of the 2017 transaction is the only building there still used largely by Toyota. The company’s name has been scrubbed off of its other former properties there.
The property Sares Regis bought has about 20 older office and industrial buildings totaling nearly 2 million square feet, plus vacant land.
A redevelopment has been anticipated since the sale, though no specifics were announced at the time. Among other uses, the site was pitched as a potential Los Angeles-area home to Amazon for its second headquarters, which multiple cities continue to compete for.
Sares Regis executives previously said the campus could hold more than 4,000 employees. Roughly 3,000 Toyota workers had been working there prior to the Plano relocation.
Douglas Park Echoes
Industrial product is the first piece of development, according to Larry Lukanish, senior vice president of Sares Regis’ commercial division.
Ground will break this summer on three buildings totaling nearly 450,000 square feet, he told the Business Journal last month at the company’s headquarters. The project will be the intersection of Van Ness Avenue and Toyota Way on a parcel Toyota used for excess parking.
The buildings will include a small amount of high-end office space alongside warehouse and distribution space, and will look much like the product the company developed about 13 miles up the freeway at its Douglas Park development in Long Beach.
The Douglas Park buildings have been snapped up by a variety of area businesses to serve as headquarters and main distribution and manufacturing facilities. Companies moving there from Torrance made up a number of the Long Beach transactions, Lukanish said.
Sares Regis has overseen development of much of the 220-acre Douglas Park project since buying the land from Boeing Corp. in a series of transactions starting in 2011.
Additional development plans for the former Toyota campus haven’t been finalized, and will “move forward as the market dictates,” according to Sares Regis.
Office Sales
Few industrial buildings are being constructed in Torrance. Just a 500,000-square-foot project was in the works at the start of the year, according to area brokerage data.
Torrance has about 25 million square feet worth of industrial buildings. Like OC, the area lacks available product; vacancy rates were under 2% at the end of the first quarter.
“It’s a great industrial neighborhood,” Lukanish said.
The developer hasn’t selected a brokerage team to market the planned industrial buildings, which will take about nine months to construct and open for lease, Lukanish said last month.
“We plan to keep these as a long-term hold.”
But two of the largest office buildings on campus aren’t part of Sares Regis’ long-term plans.
The eight-story building that Toyota used as its main office and the smaller Gramercy Plaza office are on the sales block and will likely sell this summer.
A multiacre site along the freeway at Western Avenue that could hold a retail development is also being marketed for sale.
