COMMERCIAL
One of Orange County’s top commercial brokers thinks the down market is the right time to start a business.
Louis Tomaselli is launching a brokerage and consulting company called 360 Commercial Partners. The Irvine-based company, headquartered at the new 2211 Michelson building, plans to focus on industrial and office properties and will represent corporate, investor and developer clients.
The move is a switch for Tomaselli, who’d been one of the top producers in the county while at the Anaheim office of Voit Real Estate Services, before leaving late last year. After being at the company for 24 years, he said it was time for a change, even though the market’s in a down cycle.
The current market “opens the door for those who can be nimble to create and seize opportunities,” said Tomaselli, who’s funding the new company himself.
“This is my baby,” he said.
The company currently has about five people. Tomaselli said he’s hoping to bring on more than a dozen brokers once 360 Commercial gets up and running.
Buena Park Sale
In the Jan. 18 issue of the Business Journal, I wrote a cover story on the largest industrial lease signed in Orange County of late—a 626,304-square-foot deal for Saddle Creek Corp. on Buena Park’s Knott Avenue.
That area’s proving to be a busy region. Just down the street in the Commerce Centre industrial park a building sold at 6545 Caballero Blvd. in one of the larger warehouse sales seen of late.
The 167,217-square-foot Buena Park building sold for $16.9 million, or about $101 per square foot.
That per-square-foot price is well below what had been seen in OC recently. Industrial sales had been averaging about $140 per square foot last quarter, and they peaked at $180 per square foot in 2007, according to brokerage data.
Details on the building’s buyer aren’t being disclosed, although brokers say the company—listed as Encino’s BP Westport Properties LLC—will be moving in this summer.
The building was fully leased at the time of its sale. Fox Marine Co. had been listed as the tenant for the property.
Despite the low pricing, the deal is one of the more complicated sales of late, due to a commercial mortgage-backed security loan assumption, according to Jeff Read and Greg Osborne, brokers with the Anaheim office of Grubb & Ellis Co. They represented the seller, listed as 6545 Caballero Blvd LLC.
The buyer assumed the existing debt on the property and paid cash for the balance of the purchase price, Read and Osborne said.
Bixby Adds Irvine Co. Alum
Irvine’s Bixby Land Co. has added a familiar face as its new head of leasing.
The real estate investor and developer hired Steve Center to oversee leasing, marketing and construction management activities for the company’s 6 million-square-foot office and industrial portfolio.
It’s a reunion of sorts, according to Bixby Chief Executive Bill Halford. Halford and Center worked together at Irvine Company, where Center managed about 4.6 million square feet of office space in San Diego. Halford ran the Newport Beach-based company’s office division prior to joining Bixby in 2006.
For the past few years, Center had been at Aliso Viejo’s Shea Properties, part of Walnut-based J.F. Shea
Co., where he’d been involved in marketing space at the developer’s stalled Legacy Park project in Tustin.
Corona Dealing
Newport Beach’s Master Development Corp. has been busy making deals in Corona, one of its largest markets.
The company said it just sold an 82,379-square-foot industrial building on Railroad Street for $5.8 million, or about $70 per square foot. The buyer is Duralum Products Inc., a maker of aluminum patio covers and enclosures that will be moving its headquarters from elsewhere in the city.
The sale comes a few weeks after Master Development leased a 122,000-square-foot property in a nearby Corona development to Waggin Train LLC, a maker of pet treats.
Brea Update
In last week’s column, I wrote about Detroit-based real estate developer and investor Bosc Equities LLC landing a $28 million loan to fund the upcoming redevelopment of the Brea Plaza shopping center.
There’s another local developer also working on the deal that wasn’t mentioned in last week’s report. Newport Beach-based Steadfast Cos. said last week that its newly formed advisory group, Steadfast Commercial Advisors, is partnering with Bosc Equities for the redevelopment of the 150,000-square-foot center.
