A former cement manufacturing plant in Anaheim is on the fast track to be turned into a new industrial property.
Owners of 4850 E. La Palma Ave. are moving ahead with plans for a development at the 4.6-acre site that’s slated to be 93,447 square feet.
The industrial building will be just north of the Riverside (91) Freeway near the intersection of East La Palma Avenue and Hancock Street. Brokers representing the property’s owners said they expect the project to be completed by next summer. The old cement plant is being razed as part of the development.
The owners will offer the new building for lease, according to Ben Seybold, senior vice president for the Orange office of CBRE Group Inc.
Rents for the building, which will hold as much as 17,000 square feet of office space, haven’t been disclosed.
The building will be one of the larger industrial properties built in Anaheim—home to Orange County’s largest base of warehouses and distribution facilities—in several years.
The last big industrial project to be completed in the city was Irvine-based Sares-Regis Group’s three-building Canyon Point project near Miraloma Avenue. That 120,000-square-foot development was completed in 2011, and the buildings were sold to owner-users.
Industrial Buildings
There are more than 1,800 industrial buildings in Anaheim totaling close to 45 million square feet—roughly 18% of OC’s industrial square footage.
Their vacancy rate is a little more than 4%, and monthly rents average about 51 cents per square foot, according to the latest quarterly data from the Irvine office of Voit Real Estate Services.
The La Palma property, which is along the Santa Ana River, isn’t the only industrial development on the docket in Anaheim.
Other Projects
Newport Beach-based Panattoni Development Co.’s 80-acre Anaheim Concourse development, which will hold close to 1.6 million square feet of space upon build-out, is expected to see development work move ahead in earnest next year.
Another Newport Beach-based developer, Western Realco, has its own project under way at 2201 E. Cerritos Ave. in Anaheim. The 210,000-square-foot property is being offered for sale or lease and is nearing completion.
The family that owns the La Palma property, which it has controlled for more than 50 years, is not looking to sell it, Seybold said.
The site was previously home to Ajax Cement, now known as Paragon Building Products Inc.
Over the years, the company expanded to Arizona and Nevada. It’s now based in Norco, but the company’s owners still have ties to Orange County, according to Seybold, who is marketing the property for lease along with CBRE colleague Sean Ward.
The property is expected to be divided into 54,571-square-foot and 38,876-square-foot spaces and will hold 10 dock high-loading doors, as well as three grade-level doors, according to marketing material for the property.
The site will also have 180 parking spots when complete.
Whittier-based Oltmans Construction Co. is handling construction; HPA Architecture in Irvine is doing the design work, according to Seybold. n
