When Dedeaux Properties started exploring opportunities in Orange County, the Santa Monica-based real estate company didn’t expect its first big foothold to come from a long-vacant industrial site in San Juan Capistrano.
Benjamin Horning, director of development at Dedeaux, told the Business Journal that the location’s visibility from the Santa Ana (5) Freeway and its position between Orange County and San Diego made the project too good to pass up.
“We’ve been wanting to get into Orange County for some time,” said Horning. “When this opportunity came across our desk, it really checked a lot of boxes for us.”
Dedeaux is a private real estate investment focused on logistics-related industrial properties.
If the name sounds familiar, the company was founded by Raoul “Rod” Dedeaux, the longtime USC baseball coach who led the Trojans to 11 national championships.
Before his passing, Rod co-founded Dedeaux Properties with his grandson, Brett Dedeaux, who currently serves as chief executive officer. Dedeaux Properties is an offshoot of Dart Warehouse Corp., a logistics and warehousing firm that Rod Dedeaux founded in 1938.
In October, the company completed Swallows Creek, a three-building industrial campus covering 15 acres and about 136,000 square feet at 30590 to 30700 Rancho Viejo Road.
The development marks the company’s first ground-up industrial project in Orange County.
The project includes a 101,508-square-foot warehouse and two smaller buildings measuring about 20,800 and 14,000 square feet. JLL is managing the leasing.
South County Industrial Sector
The project comes as Orange County’s industrial market starts to cool down after several years of strong demand driven by the pandemic.
According to the Kidder Mathews Q4 2025 report, the direct vacancy rate has risen to about 5.8%, up from 4.1% a year ago, because of new buildings opening and some tenants slowing their growth.
Last quarter, leasing activity fell 58% year over year, totaling 1.4 million square feet.
In South Orange County, places such as San Juan Capistrano, Dana Point and San Clemente have an industrial direct vacancy rate of 7.1%.
Horning said the region is still one of Southern California’s tightest warehouse markets because there’s little land available for development, especially in San Juan Capistrano.
“There are only a handful of areas in the city that are zoned industrial,” Horning said. “Because of that, there’s very little product available.”
Horning said that scarcity creates opportunities for tenants who want to operate in South Orange County without moving farther inland to major logistics hubs like Riverside or parts of the Inland Empire.
The property sat mostly unused for years after electronics manufacturer Endevco vacated the site in 2013, moving to Irvine.
Dedeaux stepped in during 2021. The building was demolished as part of the redevelopment.
Swallows Creek opened in October with 30-foot clear heights, dock-high loading doors and easy freeway access, making it a good last-mile distribution option in South Orange County.
Leasing has already started, with one building signed by Yamazaki Mazak Corporation, a Japanese machine tool builder and manufacturer of computer-controlled metal cutting machinery.
Horning said they’ve also seen interest from various other companies, including some outside the usual industrial sectors.
Dedeaux is in the process of rezoning the site from an industrial-only park to allow commercial manufacturing, which would allow different industrial uses, such as medical or recreational businesses.
“It’s the best of both worlds,” he said. “There aren’t many opportunities like this left. It’s rare to find a site with this kind of visibility, access, and limited competition.”
