By TOM GRAY

Contributing Reporter

It’s getting to be a pattern in Ventura County real estate: The already-hot office and industrial market is heating up even more, while vacancies continue to rise in a selectively booming retail sector.

The second quarter of 1998 was a rerun of the first in all three market areas, according to CB Richard Ellis.

Countywide office vacancy rates fell to 13.8 percent in the second quarter, from 14.6 percent in the January-March period. The quarter before that, rates were 16.6 percent. Including the Los Angeles County portions of the Conejo Valley region (Westlake Village, Agoura Hills and the western parts of Calabasas), the rate was down to 11.6 percent.

And it’s headed lower, says Tom Dwyer, a CB Richard Ellis associate specializing in office properties. The rate for the West County (the Ventura-Oxnard area) stood at 16.3 percent, but Dwyer says leases now in the works or just closed will bring it into the “low teens” in the third quarter.

He said the demand for space from large users looking for at least 20,000 square feet has never been stronger.

“We have users come out of the San Fernando Valley and Century City looking for office space,” Dwyer said. “Even companies that haven’t historically been in Southern California are migrating here.”

The already-tight market for industrial space also got tighter during the quarter, with countywide vacancies dropping from 7.8 percent in the first quarter to 7.0 percent in the second. It had been 9 percent in the fourth quarter of 1997.

The 7 percent industrial vacancy figure, low as it is, overstates the space that was available from April through June. As CB Senior Associate Jim Meaney points out, the rate includes the 577,000-square-foot Northrop plant in Newbury Park, which has been shuttered since the early ’90s and still hasn’t been sold.

“There’s a tremendous future for that property,” Meaney said. But for now it remains in escrow (to an undisclosed buyer), and any plans to develop it into usable industrial or office buildings are on hold until the change of ownership.

Leaving out the Northrop square footage, Meaney said, the countywide industrial vacancy rate would be “very tight” at 5.9 percent.

Major sales and leases in the office/industrial market during the quarter included Amgen Inc.’s purchase of a 79,000-square-foot building at 950 Rancho Conejo Blvd. in Newbury Park from Lavery & Associates.

In Simi Valley, Fields Aircraft Spares Inc. signed a 10-year lease on a 122,000-square-foot office and warehouse facility at 4175 Guardian St. owned by LCF Income Group, a California general partnership. Fields Aircraft makes and distributes aircraft seats and other cockpit equipment. In Oxnard, the County of Ventura leased the 52,000-square-foot building that housed the now-defunct Oxnard Press Courier; the county will use the facility for record storage and its Child Protective Services Department. Also in Oxnard, Technicolor leased 90,000 square feet at the former Nabisco building for warehouse operations it was relocating from Newbury Park and Simi Valley.

The demand for industrial and office space also shows up in preleasing activity. Meaney cites the example of the industrial development by Burke Commercial Properties in Newbury Park. In this 22-building project, which is “probably four months” away from completion, he said, all but two of the buildings have already been leased.

And some of this new construction is attracting buyers as well. Bram White, executive vice president of Daum Commercial Real Estate Services, says some new industrial properties are being snapped up by investors a sign, he said, that people see a shortage of space and perceive “that the value trend line is an upward one.”

The retail market also has its hot spots, like shopping centers built around supermarkets. Bill Hagelis, vice president of retail properties at the Oxnard office of Capital Commercial Real Estate, says he gets calls from would-be buyers looking for grocery-anchored centers, which “have been hot for the past two years.”

One such property, the Hughes (now Ralphs) center on VentuPark Road in Newbury Park, changed hands in the second quarter. Hagelis said investor Michael Peshic bought it from VentuPark Partnership I, a limited partnership, for $5.9 million.

In another major retail sale, Investec Properties of Santa Barbara bought most of the Camarillo Town Center from Ellis Partners for $28 million. The center, at Las Posas Road and the Ventura Freeway, includes stores in the Staples, Oshman, Petco chains along with a company-owned Target store, which was not included in the transaction.

Also in demand is space at upscale shopping centers built around cinemas, restaurants and recreational shopping. The Westlake Promenade is the class of the county in this respect; Hagelis says rents can be as high as $5.50 a square foot there.

The Simi Valley Civic Center plaza, now under construction and expected to open in the fall, also appears headed for success. Austin Bettar Jr., a retail associate at CB Richard Ellis, said small-shop space there is going for about $3 a square foot unprecedented for Simi Valley and preleasing is “way north of 75 percent.” The center is being built by Orange-based Quong Enterprises.

But rents in the county overall are flat, Bettar says, and some retail segments have been left out of the boom. One of these is the small-store market. With many small, independent retailers struggling to survive against national chains, the mom-and-pops are not a great source of demand for retail space. And Bettar said aging properties without glitzy drawing cards may be facing a gloomy future.

“There will be no shortage, and probably an increase in vacancies, of unanchored strip centers,” he said.