A post production company has bought an office building in the heart of Burbank’s Media District in one of the highest sales of its kind in the city this year.
Shapeshifter bought the 14,176-square-foot property at 4100 Riverside Drive for $5.2 million from an entity operated by Watt Properties Inc.
At $363 a square foot, the deal ranks among the highest prices for office space in Burbank in the last year. It also carried a premium for a one-story office building in the market because of its central location in the Media District, according to Scott Unger at Charles Dunn Co. Inc., who represented the buyer.
Watt bought the property in 2007 with plans to redevelop it into a Class A space more in sync with the rest of its portfolio, which includes the sleek 900,000-square-foot Watt Plaza office complex in Century City. But as Burbank’s office vacancy rate started heading to 20 percent after Walt Disney Co. moved out of nearly a half-million square feet last quarter, the firm decided to part with the building.
Shapeshifter, which leases offices at 3405 Cahuenga Blvd. near Barham Boulevard, has been looking for space to house a state-of-the-art postproduction facility closer to its movie studio clients. It plans to maintain a reduced office on Cahuenga while moving other staff into the new facility. It has yet to determine which units will move.
FedEx Corp. currently occupies about 8,400 square feet in the Burbank building, but will be reducing its footprint by more than half, with Shapeshifter taking the rest of the building.
The new owner will soon begin renovating the interior, including adding space for sound and audio editing and mastering and other postproduction facilities, according to company President Russo Anastasio.
The work should be completed and ready for move-in by the end of the month.
Linda Lee and Bill Boyd of Charles Dunn represented the seller; Stacy Vierheilig-Fraser from Charles Dunn also represented the buyer.
Pomona Development
As Los Angeles County’s industrial market continues to boom, Long Beach company Seventh Street Development has started construction on a Pomona warehouse that would be the largest built in the San Gabriel Valley in the last three years.
The $10 million, 245,000-square-foot warehouse and manufacturing building, at 1585 Mission Blvd., is expected to be completed by the end of the year, according to Seventh Street Principal Craig Furniss.
The company had planned to build without a committed tenant, but Kittrich Corp., a major manufacturer of home products, agreed to buy before construction even began. Prices were not disclosed but the asking rate was $97 a square foot. Kittrich plans to move its corporate offices and about 200 jobs from La Mirada to the new facility when construction is completed.
The building is part of the 1.5 million-square-foot Mission 71 Business Park, formerly entitled as a site for defense contractor General Dynamics, at Mission Boulevard near the interchange with State Route 71.
It is the largest industrial building to go up in the region since Seventh Street built a 655,000-square-foot facility in Irwindale for Huy Fong Foods Inc. in 2010.
The developer purchased most of the land in the Pomona business park in 2006, when a 750,000-square-foot warehouse and 40,000-square-foot storage facility were the only two buildings on the property. Seventh Street developed 11 smaller warehouse buildings on the property by 2011, all of which have been sold or leased.
The new building will feature 26,000 square feet of office space, skylights, docks and a concrete truck yard.
Seventh Street is planning to begin the final phase of development on the business park with three new buildings, ranging from 42,000 to 114,000 square feet, also for sale or lease.
The industrial market is booming across Los Angeles. The county, which is among the hottest industrial markets in the country given its proximity to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, posted a 4.7 percent vacancy in the first quarter. The industrial vacancy rate in the San Gabriel Valley in the period was 5.6 percent, according to Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.
Packing Up
Ameripak Industries Inc. is moving to Norwalk.
The retail packaging designer and manufacturer has signed a lease for 72,000 square feet at 15500-10 Blackburn Ave. with landlord Majestic Realty Co.
The five-year deal is valued at $2 million.
Ameripak had been seeking to move from Pico Rivera for the last two years.
“Ameripak was on a month-to-month contract in Pico Rivera and wanted to relocate to a building that was a farther south and more centrally located,” Josh Bonwell, first vice president at CBRE Group Inc. who represented the tenant, said in a statement.
The building has eight loading docks, a fenced yard and an office area, which the landlord is modifying for the company.
Ameripak plans to use the new property for warehousing, distribution, light manufacturing and assembly of retail packaging, and for related office and administrative uses, said Bonwell.
CBRE’s Philip Christian, David Ellis and Rick McGeagh also represented the tenant. Majestic represented itself.
Staff reporter Jacquelyn Ryan can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 228.
