A real estate affiliate of Northgate Gonzalez Market, Orange County’s largest grocer targeting Hispanic shoppers, has purchased the recently built Anaheim industrial building that serves as the company’s headquarters.
The nearly 384,000-square-foot property sold for just under $45 million, or about $117 per square foot, according to data from CoStar Group Inc.
The transaction, which closed in June, is believed to be the most expensive sale of an individual industrial building in Orange County so far this year, based on brokerage data.
Property records show an LP operating under the Los Altos I name buying the property. Records show Los Altos being based out of the just-sold building, which is at 1201 N. Magnolia Ave.
A sale had been expected.
Northgate Gonzalez was operating under a 15-year lease for the building, which opened in 2010, but the company had an option to purchase the property in the first five years of the lease and intended to do so, according to brokers involved in the initial lease.
The June sale was financed in large part through a $39.5 million loan from Wells Fargo Bank, according to CoStar data.
Hartford, Conn.-based Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers LLC sold the property, which was developed in a venture with Irvine-based Birtcher Development & Investments.
Birtcher and Cornerstone—whose affiliates have bought more than $80 million of office buildings in Lake Forest in the past month—teamed up in 2009 to buy the then-vacant land, which is located near the Santa Ana (I-5) and Riverside (91) freeways.
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The 21-acre land site previously was used by Delphi Automotive Systems LLC for a battery plant. Delphi, a major parts supplier to former parent General Motors Corp., filed for bankruptcy in 2005.
Birtcher built the new property after landing Northgate Gonzalez as a long-term tenant and buying the property out of a bankruptcy-court-overseen auction, both of which allowed the grocer to consolidate warehouse and administrative operations in a single location.
Northgate Gonzalez consolidated operations from two other local buildings into the new space.
The building is one of the few—and the largest—new industrial developments seen in OC in several years, as well as one of the area’s biggest build-to-suit projects in recent memory.
Northgate Gonzalez runs a family-owned chain of 36 grocery stores that primarily serves the Hispanic market. About a third of its locations are in Orange County, with other locations in San Diego and Los Angeles counties.
Revenue
The company was estimated to have close to $360 million in revenue last year, according to Business Journal data, making it the area’s fourth largest minority-owned company by revenue. Northgate employs nearly 5,000 people, with an estimated 1,900 in OC.
Northgate got its start in Anaheim in 1980, when Miguel Gonzalez Sr. bought a small store on Anaheim Boulevard. He didn’t have money to change the sign, so he took on the Northgate name. The company is now run by his 13 children.
Northgate earlier this year was awarded a $20 million loan to help open stores in Inglewood and South Los Angeles.
