Gateway One Lending & Finance, an Anaheim-based automotive finance company, is expanding its local operations after taking over a building once used by a large subprime mortgage company.
Gateway One—part of Minnesota-based TCF Financial Corp. since last year—signed a nearly 40,000-square-foot lease for 175 N. Riverview Drive, situated just off the Riverside (91) Freeway in Anaheim Hills.
The building is near Gateway One’s current headquarters at 160 N. Riverview, where it occupies about 25,000 square feet in a multi-tenant office building. It moved into that space early last year and will maintain operations there after expanding into the newly leased location.
The lease at 175 N. Riverview runs eight years, according to brokerage date from Daum Commercial Real Estate Services. Gateway One will occupy all of the two-story building, which traded hands late last year.
A limited liability corporation affiliated with Newport Beach-based Greenlaw Partners and Chicago-based Walton Street Capital LLC paid a reported $4.3 million, or about $110 per square foot, for the empty 175 N. Riverview building last September, according to brokerage data. The office was being marketed for sale at about $5.3 million, with monthly lease rates of $2.15 per square foot, prior to being sold.
The Anaheim Hills office previously was owned by locally based subprime lender Fremont General Corp., which went bankrupt in 2008.
Terms of the lease with Gateway One were not disclosed. Chris Migliori, executive vice president of Daum’s Newport Beach office, was the only real estate broker in the lease transaction.
Gateway One operates in the indirect auto finance marketplace, working with more than 3,400 dealers in 35 states to provide loans to prime borrowers as well as those with less-than-perfect credit.
The company was acquired late last year by TCF Financial, a regional bank holding company in Wayzata, Minn. TCF Financial kept local management—which includes former executives of independent auto lender Onyx Acceptance Corp.—in place following the sale.
Specifics of that deal were not disclosed, which kept the sale off last week’s Business Journal list of the top mergers-and-acquisition deals in Orange County last year.
Yogurt Eastland
Anaheim-based Yogurtland Inc., a growing self-serve frozen yogurt chain, has made an East Coast hire as it looks to expand its reach in that area of the country.
The company recently hired Tony Ozelis as its director of real estate for the East Coast.
Ozelis, a native of Long Island, N.Y., has more than 25 years of experience working in franchise real estate in the East Coast region, according to the company.
He will be charged with helping the company expand in that region, particularly in New York and New Jersey.
Yogurtland said it has plans to open 20 new stores throughout the East Coast by June.
The company, which started six years ago, now has more than 170 locations in the U.S., Mexico and Guam. It wants to expand to more than 1,000 total locations over the next five years, with some 75 new locations opened or in development by the end of this year.
Some new targeted markets include South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia, among other states.
The Yogurtland self-serve idea started in 2006 when Chief Executive Phillip Chang added frozen yogurt at a tapioca drink store he ran in Fullerton.
Chang opened a Yogurtland in Irvine a year later. He scored a hit and quickly added two more locations and set up a franchise system.
Sale Tweaks
This week’s court-overseen sale of Grubb & Ellis Co.’s assets should bring in a little more money for creditors than first expected.
New York-based BGC Partners Inc.’s initial $30 million credit bid to buy the Santa Ana-based brokerage’s assets has been bumped up by an additional $15 million in cash after complaints from creditors that they weren’t going to recover any money in the sale. A New York bankruptcy court is expected to oversee an auction of the struggling brokerage’s assets on March 21, with an approval of the sale slated for the following day.
The improved offer is “fair, reasonable and appropriate under the circumstances,” Judge Martin Glenn wrote in approving the revised BGC bid.
BGC Partners, which last year bought New York-based commercial brokerage Newmark Knight Frank, isn’t expected to see any competing bids in the auction.
Grubb & Ellis filed for bankruptcy Feb. 20, listing $150 million in assets and $167 million in liabilities.
