A 16-acre site southeast of downtown L.A. that once was the subject of protest marches now stands to be redeveloped as an industrial park.
Back in the 1980s, the state proposed building a $100 million prison at the site across the L.A. River from Boyle Heights. But the plans met with stiff community opposition and were dropped in 1992.
Flash forward to 1998, when the state declared the property to be surplus and gave the L.A. Community Redevelopment Agency an option to purchase it. The CRA recently issued a request for proposals and received 10 responses last week from developers interested in building a multiple- or single-tenant industrial park.
“If you had said to me a few years ago that major developers would be fighting over an industrial site in the inner city, I would have jumped up and down,” said Rocky Delgadillo, deputy mayor for economic development.
The high interest level underscores the healthy state of the central L.A. industrial market, where the vacancy rate is only 3.1 percent.
“There’s a real thirst for new development, for manufacturing and warehousing,” said Dwight Hotchkiss, a director at Cushman & Wakefield. “It’s definitely a great piece of land.”
Those interested in developing the site are Trammell Crow Co.; Insignia Commercial Investments Group; Goldrich & Kest Industries; Richard Meruelo of Alameda Produce Market Inc.; Legacy Partners; Pacific Investment LLC; Ezralow Co.; The Donaty Group/Neman Brothers & Associates; Lowe Enterprises Commercial Group and Lennar Partners.
Delgadillo stressed that the city is not interested in warehousing operations and hopes to lure light manufacturers involved in high-tech, food processing, fashion, component making or “green” industries.
“What we’ve envisioned all along is that someone would purchase the site and bring quality jobs to East L.A. on a site that was going to be a prison,” Delgadillo said.
Real estate consultant Larry Kosmont agreed that manufacturing is a possibility for the site, although there are a couple of challenges, including an aged street system.
The city plans to buy the property from the state for $13.50 a square foot and then sell it to the chosen developer, said Steve Andrews, chief of strategic planning for the redevelopment agency. The minimum purchase price for the developer will be $14 per square foot, which amounts to more than $8 million.
The property known as the Crown Coach Site is part of L.A.’s Brownfields Program, which brings contaminated sites back to productive use. School buses were built there many years ago by one of the manufacturing operations located at the site.
