The Seal Beach plant used by drug maker Dendreon Corp. has been sold to a Los Angeles-based industrial property investor.
Rexford Industrial Realty Inc., which went public last year, paid $21.1 million for 1700 Saturn Way, a 170,865-square-foot building in the Pacific Gateway Business Center near the Garden Grove (22) Free-way.
The property sold for roughly $123 per square foot. A unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co. sold it, according to property records.
Seattle-based Dendreon uses the plant to make Provenge, a prostate cancer treatment. It moved into the newly built property in 2010 after signing a 10 ½-year lease valued at $13.6 million, and putting nearly $65 million of capital improvements into the building.
Dendreon had an option to buy the building in the first three years of its lease but never did so.
The company, which ranked as the third largest drug maker in Orange County by employee count last September with an estimated 250 people here, has scaled back operations here and in other manufacturing locations through a series of layoffs over the past six months. It announced plans to lay off nearly 60 people in Seal Beach in January.
Rexford said at the time of the purchase that the tenant at the Seal Beach facility remains fully leased under a long-term deal. The investor also noted that the industrial market in West OC, which totals about 40.7 million square feet, had a 2.3% vacancy rate as of the end of the first quarter.
The purchase adds to a string of Orange County deals Rexford has made since it raised $224 million in its initial public offering last July.
In November, it paid $23.3 million for a business park in Yorba Linda and one in Anaheim.
AT&T Action
Area buildings used by telecom giant AT&T Inc. continue to be a big source of deals for local real estate companies.
The latest took place in Buena Park, where Borstein Enterprises, a Los Angeles-based residential developer, recently paid $10.8 million for a 5.7-acre property at 8925 E. Orangethorpe Ave., just north of the Riverside (91) Freeway near Magnolia Avenue.
The building, which was sold by a local family trust, currently holds a nearly 65,000-square-foot light manufacturing building used by AT&T.
The tenant could end up renewing its lease, but Borstein’s ultimate goal is to turn the property into a townhome development, according to Colliers Inc. Executive Vice President Clyde Stauff, who represented the buyer and seller in the transaction.
It’s one of three sales topping $10 million in the past month that Stauff worked on, along with a $14.8 million industrial deal in Garden Grove and a $16.5 million sale in Pomona.
AT&T, in addition to the Buena Park building where it’s a tenant, this year sold its eight-story office in downtown Anaheim, the 200 Center St. Promenade building, to Irvine-based PRES Cos. The property sold for about $18 million in a deal that closed in January.
AT&T, about a month ago, also sold an 11-story building in Pasadena to Newport Beach-based Saunders Property Co. for a reported $81 million.
Austin Again
Newport Beach-based Mark IV Capital Inc. is the latest OC developer targeting the area around Austin, Texas, for deals.
The real estate investment and development firm recently announced its plan to build an 82,000-square-foot office in Round Rock, a town about 10 miles north of downtown Austin.
It is Mark IV Capital’s first investment in the Austin area. The developer bought the land for the development last October, along with an existing next-door building of about 87,000 square feet, according to a report last month in the Austin Business Journal. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.
Tenants at the nearly full existing building include Irvine-based Broadcom Corp.
Other local real estate companies buying properties in and around Austin over the past year include Buchanan Street Partners, MIG Real Estate LLC, KBS Realty Inc., all in Newport Beach, and Steadfast Cos. in Irvine.
Mark IV is also moving ahead with an office development closer to home, a 21,311-square-foot office at 4450 MacArthur Blvd. between the Fairmont Newport Beach hotel and the Pacific Club.
The company plans to use about half of the two-story building for its headquarters.
