Irvine-based Sares-Regis Group is starting to bet big on speculative industrial development on projects just outside of Orange County.
The real estate investor and developer recently snapped up a roughly 13.3-acre property in Santa Fe Springs located a little more than a mile from the intersection of the Santa Ana (I-5) and San Gabriel River (I-605) freeways.
Sares-Regis paid more than $10.4 million, or about $18 per square foot, for the Los Angeles County land, located at 9306 Sorensen Ave., according to brokerage data.
Financing for a bulk of the sale was provided by the Newport Beach office of U.S. Bank, according to property records.
The property was sold by United States Gypsum, which had an older warehouse and office facilities totaling about 180,000 square feet on the site.
Those buildings are being demolished, with Sares-Regis planning to build a 305,000-square-foot industrial building on the site without a specific tenant in mind.
The building could be completed by the end of the year, according to Clyde Stauff, senior executive vice president for the Irvine office of Colliers International, who helped broker the deal.
Vacancy rates for high-end industrial properties in the Santa Fe Springs area now run at about 3%, said Stauff, who also recently completed an unrelated, nearly $20 million sale in Sante Fe Springs where another 450,000 square feet of industrial space has been proposed.
The Sorensen Avenue deal comes a little more than a month after Sares-Regis announced it was moving ahead with plans for a seven-building industrial project totaling 677,142 square feet at Douglas Park, a masterplanned development next to Long Beach Airport.
When completed this summer, the buildings will range from 33,455 square feet to 170,673 square feet, according to Sares-Regis. The developer places the total value of the Long Beach project on completion at $95 million.
Sares-Regis’ most recent OC industrial project was for a trio of smaller buildings along Miraloma Avenue in Anaheim that totaled about 120,000 square feet. Those buildings sold out within a year of their construction in 2010.
Apartment Hopes
A 2.1-acre commercial site along a busy stretch of Beach Boulevard in Huntington Beach is up for sale, with the potential of residential development being offered for the site’s next owner.
The Irvine office of land brokerage Land Advisors Organization recently listed the property, at 18151 Beach Blvd., for sale. They’re expecting to get about $6 million for the site, which sits next to the DeLillo Chevrolet dealership and now houses an Enterprise Rent-a-Car office.
The property’s current owner, a local investor who bought the site last summer, has proposed building a 108-unit residential complex at the site, though entitlements for the project have not been formally submitted to the city. Letters of intent are due by mid-April, according to Land Advisors’ Allison Rawlins and Mike Hunter, the brokers for the project.
Corona Short Sale
Newport Beach-based Turner Real Estate Investments is eyeing a recently purchased infill location in Corona for an apartment project.
The real estate investment firm recently paid an undisclosed amount in a short sale for a 28-acre plot of land that runs alongside the Riverside Freeway called the Ranch at Corona Palisades.
The site, located on Palisades Drive, is 3.8 miles from the OC border and about 1 mile from a 300-acre residential land site in Corona that Irvine-based Foremost Communities Inc. and partners bought last month for $3.5 million in a court auction.
Turner’s recently acquired property was graded and had underground utility work completed by its prior owner, Newport Beach-based Bkm Development Co., which had envisioned a larger industrial project at the site.
Turner officials aim to “capitalize on the white-hot multifamily market” by entitling a bulk of the land for an apartment project, which would be completed by another developer. The rest of the site would remain as industrial-zoned, with development moving ahead when that market returns.
Robert Socci and Jack Faris of Voit Real Estate Services Inc. represented the seller in the transaction.
The latest buy “exemplifies our continued focus on acquiring distressed commercial real estate assets with growth potential in the West,” said Rusty Turner, Turner Real Estate Investments’ president and chief executive.
The company launched an opportunity fund in 2009 to buy distressed assets in California, Arizona and Nevada.
