Walt Disney Co. has inked a deal to lease one of the largest new industrial buildings built in Anaheim over the past decade to support its local theme park and resort operations.
The Burbank-based company recently completed a lease for a 161,794-square-foot building at Panattoni Development Co.’s Anaheim Concourse development.
The industrial development, a multibuilding project going up on land that once served as a campus for aerospace giant Boeing Co., is about seven miles from the Disneyland Resort, an area that includes the Disneyland and Disney California Adventure theme parks and the Downtown Disney retail center.
The company recently announced plans to revamp a portion of the Disneyland Park with the addition of a section based on the Star Wars movies. The plan calls for temporary shutdowns of parts that will likely bring up changing logistical needs over the course of construction, which is slated to start in 2017.
The new industrial lease for 1200 N. Miller St., meanwhile, accounts for one of two 161,794-square-foot buildings on the block. They are the largest of the 14 buildings that Newport Beach-based Panattoni has developed for Anaheim Concourse overall.
The project, a mix of for-sale and leased buildings totaling nearly 1.4 million square feet, is the largest industrial development to be built in Orange County in more than a decade.
Disney’s deal was the largest new industrial lease in Orange County completed in the third quarter, according to a recent market report by the Irvine office of brokerage Transwestern.
Financial terms of the lease were not disclosed.
Disney is expected to move into the building in early 2016, according to brokerage data.
The building is expected to be used by Disney for a variety of purposes, including employee services, warehouse space, and some offices, according to sources familiar with the deal.
Office space is expected to total 10,600 square feet, according to marketing materials from the local office of CBRE Group Inc., whose brokers handle leasing at Anaheim Concourse.
CBRE officials declined to comment on the new lease.
The new facility is believed to be among the largest Orange County buildings that Disney will occupy for its internal uses beyond the immediate vicinity of its theme parks. It’s also believed to be one of the largest area buildings that the company occupies but does not own.
Disney’s largest office address in Anaheim’s resort area is a four-story building on Ball Avenue of nearly 340,000 square feet. It owns that office, which runs next to the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway and is adjacent to its theme parks.
It also leases close to 207,000 square feet at an industrial building on Cerritos Avenue that’s about a mile and a half from the resort area, according to CoStar records.
Top Employer
Disney is Orange County’s largest employer, with some 27,000 workers here, primarily in Anaheim, and will likely boost that number with the new Star Wars Land.
The company has been making a number of real estate moves recently regarding its back-office operations.
It filed plans in July with the city of Anaheim to change the use of a nearly 160,000-square-foot industrial building it owns but doesn’t occupy and that is a few blocks from its two area theme parks.
Disney said in city filings that it wants to convert the existing facility, now used by a dental product manufacturer, “for back-of-house office and warehouse uses to support the theme parks, hotel and entertainment venues within the Disneyland Resort.”
It paid a reported $48.4 million last year to buy the building, at 1515 S. Manchester Ave., and an adjoining 79,000-square-foot office at 1585 S. Manchester that’s leased to a government agency.
Disney earlier this year bought the Carousel Inn & Suites, a hotel next to those two buildings, at 1530 S. Harbor Blvd. in Anaheim. The company hasn’t disclosed specific plans for that property, which is across the street from its Anaheim resorts.
Speculation has centered on a potential demolition of that hotel property, which combined with the land where the two offices are, could free up land for a park expansion.
