Industrial Developer Adds to Portfolio in Tight Market
Real Estate by Danny King
First oil, now glass.
Sares-Regis Group bought a vacant 12-acre City of Industry site that will be developed into 250,000 square feet of industrial buildings over the next eight months. The parcel at the corner of Old Ranch Road and Ferraro Parkway long had been part of a Libbey Glass Inc. plant.
No price was disclosed, although the company estimated the value of the completed development at $20 million. The property was valued at $8 a foot for the raw land when it first hit the market two years ago, according to Phil Lombardo, a principal at Trammell Crow Co., who was familiar with the site. That would peg the land value at $4.2 million.
“It’s unique to find this large a site in an infill market like City of Industry,” said Steve Bellitti, senior vice president of Colliers Seeley International, who, with Tom Taylor, represented both sides on the deal.
The two-building development will be divided into 10 units ranging from 20,000 to 35,000 square feet, said Bellitti, who added that Sares-Regis has not decided whether the property will be kept or sold after the lease-up.
In April, the Irvine-based developer bought a 21-acre piece of Powerine Refinery from Cenco Electric Co., which is owned by televangelist Pat Robertson, with plans to develop the Santa Fe Springs site into 450,000 square feet of industrial buildings.
Sares-Regis, which already owns a 320,000-square-foot building in Industry, is increasing its presence in a San Gabriel Valley industrial market that continues to show increased activity and dropping vacancies.
Second quarter industrial vacancies in the submarket were at 3.1 percent, down from 3.8 percent for the year-earlier quarter, according to Grubb & Ellis Co.
Taxes Back
The Church of Scientology appears to have paid its tithe.
The church, which until two months ago risked having two of its Hollywood properties auctioned by the county for being delinquent on its property taxes since the 1996-97 fiscal year, is now current on the parcels. On June 20, the Church paid the county more than $248,000 for its annex site at 6349 Hollywood Blvd. and more than $156,000 for 6724 Hollywood Blvd.
“They were paid in full, which surprised me,” said Sharon Perkins, operations chief at the Los Angeles County Treasurer and Tax Collector’s office. “None of the parcels are subject to the tax collector’s sale.”
The payments end a years-long dispute over the amount owed by the church, which owns 17 properties in the city of Los Angeles, according to the Treasurer and Tax Collector’s office, and has held properties in Hollywood for more than 30 years.
Church of Scientology International spokeswoman Linda Simmons Hight said in February the church had overpaid its property taxes and that the properties in question should be considered tax exempt.
“We have so many different properties and various portions are exempt, so they had to calculate it all by hand,” said Hight last week. “There wasn’t anything contentious about it at all.”
Sweet Charity?
Robert Maguire, responding for the first time to questions of impropriety arising from a July 18 fundraiser for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said the party had “absolutely no bearing” on his attempt to sign the district to a large lease.
The shindig, hosted at the Gas Co. Tower, owned by Maguire, came as he was courting the LAUSD to sign a lease that could be worth as much as $15 million. The $1,000-a-head event, the first hosted by Maguire for LAUSD, raised about $300,000 for the district’s $3 billion bond campaign.
“I’ve been involved in raising money for a variety of charities and this is by far the most critical issue,” said Maguire, managing partner at Maguire Partners. “The timing was coincidental.”
Due to space constraints stemming from Bank of America’s staggered move from the LAUSD-owned Beaudry Building, the district is in the market with a three-year requirement for about 200,000 square feet, commencing next March. On July 9, LAUSD voted to narrow its choices for the “swing space” between the Maguire-owned KPMG Tower, where it has 300,000 square feet of offices, and Transamerica Center. The district expects to come to a decision in August.
“They should settle on the lowest-priced alternative,” said Maguire. “If somebody else beats us out, LAUSD should take it.”
Gone Shopping
A joint venture of Portland, Ore.-based ScanlanKemperBard Cos. and New York-based Praedium Group bought three shopping centers totaling 400,000 square feet for $38 million. Occupancy rates for the centers Inglewood’s Crenshaw Imperial Shopping Center, Santa Fe Springs Plaza and Huntington Park’s Margarita Plaza range from 86 to 92 percent.
Last year, the joint venture was under contract to buy 29 shopping centers from Burnham Pacific Properties Inc., which was liquidating its holdings. The $30 million deal fell through, according to Bob Scanlan, chief executive at SKB, and Burnham sold Margarita Plaza to MacFarlane Partners, which in turn sold it to the joint venture. The other two properties were purchased from Burnham.
“They’re not very sexy they just make money,” said Scanlan, who added that between $1 million and $1.5 million in improvements would be put into each center.
Staff reporter Danny King can be reached at (323) 549-5225 ext. 230, or at
[email protected]
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