Two mixed-use luxury apartment complexes totaling nearly 700 units are rising in the Warner Center neighborhood of Woodland Hills.
Q East and its 245 units with 48,207 square feet of retail, commercial/office space and live/work units are planned to rise on 3.2 acres at 6200 Variel Ave. at Erwin Street.
Q West, with 347 units on 2.7 acres, will sit above nearly 20,000 square feet of restaurants and office space across from the Westfield Corp.’s Village at Westfield Topanga shopping center. The five-story complex will include a rooftop deck, a pool and an outdoor movie theater.
Both are developed by California Home Builders in Canoga Park, a division of Evenhaim Industries Corp., and designed
by Newman Garrison + Partners in
Costa Mesa.
California Home Builders also plans to build a mixed-use project with about 350 luxury apartments and commercial space on the site of an office building at 6109 De Soto Ave. in Woodland Hills, which the company bought in August for $16 million. The property sits on more than 3.5 acres and has nearly 300 parking spaces.
Both apartment complexes and the office building sit within the Warner Center 2035 Specific Plan.
Industrial Crunch
Of the 173 million square feet of industrial space in the greater San Fernando Valley, only 1.2 percent was vacant in the third quarter, according to CBRE Group Inc. in Los Angeles.
The market actually gave back more space than tenants took, leading to more than 5,100 square feet of negative net absorption.
Sales, except for investment sales, and lease activity amounted to 649,000 square feet over the quarter. More than 800,000 square feet is under construction and 237,000 square feet came onto the market over the quarter.
Average asking lease rates were 82 cents a square foot, according to CBRE. The only areas that are pricier than the Valley are downtown Los Angeles and the South Bay, where the vacancy rate is less than 1 percent.
The least expensive industrial space is in Ventura County, where rates are at 66 cents a square foot. Vacancy rates there are the highest in the greater L.A. area at 2 percent.
The greater San Fernando Valley and downtown Los Angeles both had 20 percent of the industrial space inventory in the greater L.A. area in the third quarter, the most of any other area.
Going forward, the commercial real estate firm predicts rents will increase 3.5 percent for L.A. County despite 2.8 million square feet of new product coming onto the market by the end of the year, because demand will continue to outpace available product.
Accounting Tenant
Santa Clarita Valley’s rapid growth has caught the attention of an Encino accounting firm.
Martini Iosue & Akpovi recently opened a 500-square-foot office at 27201 Tourney Road in Valencia because of the area’s growth, said Kevin Holmes, an assurance and consulting partner who specializes in audit, business advisory and internal control consulting. Holmes will head the office.
As a resident of Saugus, Holmes has seen the local market expand in the past 20 years, he said.
“We have seen that as companies have grown in the SCV and moved into the area, the accounting resources available to partner with the local businesses have not kept up with the pace of growth,” Holmes wrote in an email to the Business Journal.
Additionally, the firm has several clients in the Santa Clarita Valley, he explained, making it easier to service them. Plus, “there’s also a huge opportunity to acquire new clients, which are based in the area,” Holmes added.
Steven Martini, another partner with the firm focusing on tax, consulting and management, and an owner and the managing director of ProVisors, a network of senior-level trusted advisors in Sherman Oaks, was named as one of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal’s 200 Most Influential People in the San Fernando Valley.
The CPA firm focuses on financial reporting, tax planning,compliance services, international operations, taxation and mergers and acquisitions.
