Australian real estate investor Dexus Property Group has filled up a big La Palma warehouse it bought last summer after landing a tenant from a few miles away in La Mirada.
Dexus, whose U.S. operations are run out of Newport Beach, recently inked Travelers Club Luggage Inc. to a lease for 131,280 square feet of space at a building it owns at 5911 Fresca Drive.
Torrance-based Travelers Club—which makes luggage, duffel bags, computer cases, garment bags and other travel accessories—will move its warehouse operations from a roughly 100,000-square-foot facility just over the Los Angeles County line in La Mirada.
The 63-month lease is effective March 1, according to Dexus. Terms of the lease weren’t disclosed.
Dexus paid $18.3 million for the 292,080-square-foot La Palma industrial building, located near the Santa Ana (I-5) and Artesia (91) freeways, last July. The deal was one of the larger sales seen in West Orange County’s industrial market last year.
The building is now fully leased. Boston-based records management company Iron Mountain Inc. occupies the rest of the property.
Peter Castleton, Cameron Driscoll and Luke McDaniel of Voit Real Estate Services Inc. represented Dexus in the lease. Kent Choi of NAI Capital represented Travelers Club.
Cars to Counters
Precision Countertops Inc., which bills itself as the largest fabricator and installer of kitchen countertops in the Pacific Northwest, has chosen a high-profile location in Fountain Valley for its first store in Southern California.
The Portland, Ore.-based company recently inked a three-year lease for a 37,180-square-foot industrial building just off the San Diego (I-405) Freeway, at 18370 Pacific St. It will be Precision Countertop’s eighth store, according to the company’s website.
The site was previously home to Euromasters Classic Cars of Fountain Valley, which recently closed its doors, along with sister company South Coast Electric Cars of Costa Mesa.
Those two car companies shuttered “due to the recession”, according to those companies. Court filings show their chief executive and owner, John Calicchio, filing for bankruptcy protection earlier this month.
The Fountain Valley site currently is seeing major refurbishing work, according to Steve Young, a broker with the Orange office of CBRE Group Inc. who represented the tenant in the deal, along with colleague Tom Dorman. Construction is expected to be completed in a few months.
The property will operate as a showroom and distribution center for Precision Countertops, which makes and installs countertops made of granite, quartz, solid-surface and laminate materials.
The company is also reported to have partnerships with Home Depot Inc. and other home improvement chains to manufacture and provide countertops.
The owner of the Pacific Street property, Fountain Valley Industrial Parcel 13 Investment Co., was represented by Mitch Wright of Bob Wright Industrial Properties Inc.
Construction Change
McCarthy Building Cos., Orange County’s largest commercial construction company, has a new president for its California operations.
The company recently appointed Randy Highland as the president of its California region. He’ll be based in McCarthy’s Newport Beach office.
Highland replaces Carter Chappell, who retired at the end of the year but is remaining on the board of directors for the builder, whose local operations worked on about $970 million of business in 2010, according to Business Journal records.
Highland previously served as McCarthy’s Nevada/Utah division president from 2004 to 2011 and has been with the company for more than 20 years. He is responsible for the financial performance and overall operations of McCarthy’s Southern California and Northern Pacific divisions in his new role, according to the builder.
Apartment Buy
An investment fund run by Irvine-based Steadfast Cos. has paid $33 million for an apartment complex in Iowa. The company’s Steadfast Income REIT Inc. bought Windsor on the River, a 424-unit community in Cedar Rapids.
It’s the REIT’s second Iowa property. In December 2010 Steadfast acquired Park Place Apartments, a high-rise building located in downtown Des Moines. The Steadfast REIT now owns nine properties with a combined value of more than $100 million, according to the co
