El Segundo’s Douglas Technology Center has changed hands for $49 million in a deal that closed May 25 after being held by NG Holdings LP for just a year.
Foster City-based Equinix Inc. purchased the 216,000-square-foot industrial research and development building at 445 N. Douglas St. in a deal that breaks down to $227 per square foot.
Equinix, which operates server farms, plans an extensive upgrade of the vacant building to turn it into a state of the art data center before moving into it by the end of the year. The firm will add heavy electrical systems, fiber optic cable and servers.
“It’s a very good price for the real estate,” said Dave Drummond of Colliers International Property Consultants Inc., who represented NG Holdings in the deal.
Equinix already owns a 105,000-square-foot building in El Segundo on Maple Avenue. “This is an expansion, they are going to stay in the other building,” Drummond said.
NG Holdings, an entity of ING Clarion, a pension fund advisor, purchased the building last year for $40.5 million. At the time, the building was occupied by Northrop Grumman Corp., but the Los Angeles defense contractor terminated its lease there when it lost out on a government satellite contract.
Initially, Drummond had been hired by NG Holdings to lease the building, but Equinix came forward with a purchase offer.
“Because of the improvements they will put in, they prefer to own,” he said. “They were very focused on trying to do a deal on this property. It was an ideal location for them.”
The building includes 100,000 square feet of office space and 116,000 square feet of warehouse space. It sits on 11 acres.
The El Segundo industrial market is very tight, with low vacancy rates across the board for various types of specialized buildings. And the vacancy rate in the larger South Bay market was 1.8 percent in the first quarter, down from 2.5 percent a year earlier, according to Grubb & Ellis Co.
Chris Sheehan, Eric Lastition and Steve Cramer of Colliers International also represented NG Holdings. David Stromath and Dean Haney of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. also represented Equinix.
Pasadena Conversion
The Town Homes at Orange Grove Circle, a 64-unit apartment development in Pasadena, has been sold for $32 million.
Los Angeles-based Ratkovich Co., in conjunction with an unnamed institutional partner, has sold the property to Orange Grove Circle Communities LLC in a deal that closed June 12.
The property at 435 Orange Grove Blvd. has a condominium tract map in place, and the buyer plans to convert the units to condos, said Scott McMullin of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler LP, a real estate advisory firm.
Units range from one- to four-bedroom apartments. The property sold at a rate of $500,000 per unit. The average size of a unit at the development is over 1,800 square feet.
“The size of the units and the fact that the property has a large landscaped area make it a natural condo conversion,” said McMullin, who represented the institutional partner and Ratkovich, a real estate development and investment company.
The buyer represented itself in-house. John Crump and Matthew Lawton of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler also represented the sellers.
Church Property
Immanuel Presbyterian Church of Los Angeles, a historic Gothic church in the Wilshire Center area, has put a church-adjacent parcel on the market.
The parcel, which is behind the 3300 Wilshire Blvd. church, totals over 30,000 square feet and is being marketed as a development opportunity.
The church is hoping to retain ownership of the parcel and would like to lease it out to a developer who would build a residential development there, said Richard Gentilucci, president of Burbank-based BTG-Advisors LLC, a real estate advisory firm retained by the church.
Development possibilities include assisted living, affordable housing or even a school.
Staff reporter Daniel Miller can be reached at
[email protected]
or (323) 549-5225, ext. 263.
