COMMERCIAL
A below-the-radar investment group in Newport Beach made one of the biggest bank-owned retail buys in Southern California of late.
Chino Hills Mall LLC this month bought the Shoppes at Chino Hills, a 388,000-square-foot mall that was developed by Opus West Corp. in 2008 at a reported cost of $135 million.
The property, which is 87% full, hit financial difficulties last year as the Phoenix-based developer went bankrupt.
The mall traded hands this month for $94.5 million; it was sold by a bank group led by Bank of America Corp.
State records show Chino Hills Mall LLC’s offices to be based out of the mall, but sources said the investment group is actually in Newport Beach. The company’s managing director is Tim Sotoodeh, part of Santa Ana’s Pacific Strategic Fund Group Inc.
The Chino Hills buy is one of the company’s first big commercial real estate acquisitions, according to sources.
The local investment sales team of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler LP, a real estate investment bank and brokerage, helped sell off the Chino Hills mall. The property’s described as the largest banked-owned retail property put up for sale in Southern California during the recent downturn.
Holliday Fenoglio’s investment sales team was led by senior managing director Ryan Gallagher and directors Kelly Rohfeld, Bryan Ley and John Crump. Gallagher had been one of the top investment sales brokers for the Newport Beach office of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. before joining Holliday Fenoglio’s Irvine office last year.
CB Richard Ellis also worked on the sale and is handling leasing at the mall. PM Realty Group is the mall’s property manager.
Voit Growing
Newport Beach’s Voit Real Estate Services is beefing up its local brokerage ranks and is looking to expand its presence outside Orange County.
One of Voit’s top industrial brokers, Mitch Zehner, said he’s doubled the size of his “Zehner Group,” a brokerage team that focuses on industrial sales, leases, investment sales and land sales.
The additions come a few months after Zehner’s long-time partner, Louis Tomaselli, left Voit to start a brokerage and consulting firm, Irvine’s 360 Commercial Partners.
Zehner now has an eight-person team in the company’s Anaheim office, which he heads along with his partner, Seth Davenport, a senior vice president for Voit.
New hires include brokers Ryan Moore and Jason Di Rocco, who both previously worked at Lee & Associates, as well as two existing Voit members, Jennifer Ellison and Brooke Porter. Moore and Di Rocco will be focused on deals in North County and Corona.
Outside OC, Voit’s looking to open its second Los Angeles-area brokerage office, according to Managing Director Kurt Strasmann. The company plans to open an office in Commerce in the next few months, joining an existing Woodland Hills branch.
Among new business the company’s brought on, Voit announced earlier this month it was named project manager and property manager by Lamco LLC, a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., for a 12-building industrial and office portfolio located across five states.
The Lamco portfolio totals about 450,000 square feet and is valued at close to $100 million.
That assignment came a month after Voit was named asset manager on a portfolio of 12 distressed properties around Sacramento that’s valued at close to $150 million.
360 Adds, Too
Irvine’s 360 Commercial Partners has added another broker to its fledgling operations.
The company said it hired industrial broker Steve Wagner, who previously was a senior associate at CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s Newport Beach office.
Wagner will be an associate director of 360 Commercial’s industrial advisory practice, working with the group’s director, Zachary Niles.
KBS Keeps Buying
An affiliate of Newport Beach’s KBS Realty Advisors has paid $12.5 million for an office in the Denver suburbs.
KBS Real Estate Investment Trust II Inc. said it acquired an 82,320-square-foot building in Greenwood Village, Colo., which is outside Denver. The deal works out to about $152 per square foot.
The building is 98% leased to Verizon Wireless, ClearChoice Management Services and UGL Equis.
KBS said it funded the purchase with proceeds from the non-traded real estate investment trust’s ongoing initial public offering, which to date has raised some $1.1 billion in the past two years, but later may take out a mortgage on the property.
KBS and its affiliated companies now count 12 properties in Colorado, totaling about 1.4 million square feet of space.
