Up to four Lake Forest offices leased to Panasonic Avionics Corp., including the company’s main headquarters, are on the sales block, according to area brokers.
Panasonic Avionics, an in-flight entertainment system manufacturer and a unit of Secaucus, N.J.-based Panasonic Corp. of North America, leases space in a six-building campus in Lake Forest that totals close to 440,000 square feet.
Panasonic Avionics inked lease renewals for a bulk of that space, located off Bake Parkway near the Foothill (241) Toll Road, in late 2010. Another 100,000 square feet of space was added last year in a separate transaction.
The six buildings are owned by a handful of different landlords. Panasonic Avionics’ office at 26200 Enterprise Way, which serves as the headquarters for the company’s local operations, is owned by Johns Creek, Ga.-based Piedmont Office Realty Trust Inc.
Piedmont put the two-story, 26200 Enterprise building on the market for sale about a month ago, according to data from CoStar Group Inc. The Irvine office of Cushman & Wakefield Inc. has the listing for the building, which runs about 144,906 square feet.
Piedmont has owned the building since its 2000 construction. An asking price hasn’t been disclosed. The property had an assessed value of about $19.4 million as of 2010.
Panasonic Avionics has about 10 more years on its lease at the building, and currently pays a little under $1.9 million in rent annually for the office, according to marketing materials. That works out to a monthly rent of about $1.07 per square foot.
Other landlords that lease office space to Panasonic Avionics locally include Irvine-based Bixby Land Co. and Abbey Co. in Long Beach.
Of those buildings, Bixby is said to be shopping its three-building Commercentre office complex, which runs about 150,000 square feet in total, according to several sources.
Bixby bought the buildings in 2000 for a reported $26 million, according to property records.
Panasonic Avionics employs about 1,300 people in Lake Forest, making it the city’s second-largest employer after sunglasses maker Oakley Inc. It is unknown if the company would be interested in buying any of the local offices it currently leases.
Local buildings have Panasonic Avionic’s production, corporate and other operations. More than 3,600 planes have Panasonic’s gear for watching movies, TV shows, shopping, playing games or making calls.
Moving Ahead
Signs of an economic recovery have prompted Aliso Viejo-based Shea Properties to restart work at one of its largest retail developments, a shopping center in West Ventura County.
The developer said it is moving ahead on construction at The Collection at RiverPark, a roughly 600,000-square-foot center that’s part of a larger, 702-acre master-planned development along Highway 101 called RiverPark.
The shopping center has a 150,000-square-foot Target, opened in mid-2011. But a bulk of the retail project’s development had been put on hold over the past three years as the downturn played out.
Local reports note that a majority of the developer’s work done over the past few years was mainly to keep permits from expiring.
“We certainly would have liked to open the center earlier, but let’s face it, times have been difficult for all of us,” Shea Properties Chief Executive Colm Macken said.
“[Now] all of the economic indicators are trending in the right direction,” Macken said. “Retail sales have been on the rise and the overall economy feels like it’s getting stronger. We decided that it was time to restart construction.”
The goal now is to complete most of the center’s retail construction by year’s end, though a few portions of the development could stretch into early next year. Other anchor tenants at The Collection include a Whole Foods Market, REI and a 16-screen Century Theatres.
The project will also include about 60,000 square feet of office space that’s being built above shops on a portion of the center.
The residential portion of the larger RiverPark development is slated to include about 1,800 homes and 1,000 apartments, with homebuilding being led by Shea Properties’ sister company, Walnut-based Shea Homes, as well as Standard Pacific Corp. in Irvine.
More than half of the housing portion of the development has been built, according to local reports.
