CenterPoint Properties adds 307K sf industrial plant in South Bay

CenterPoint Properties has purchased a Carson industrial facility in a $143 million leaseback deal with defense and aerospace firm Ducommun.

Santa Ana-based Ducommun has a five-year lease on the 307,000-square-foot complex with three five-year renewal options, according to Bisnow.

The deal is the sixth industrial sale in L.A. County this year to top $100 million.
The complex sits at 268 E. Gardena Boulevard, not far from several freeways that provide links to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

It’s CenterPoint’s sixth purchase in the South Bay and 15th across Southern California this year. This month alone, CenterPoint has purchased a three-property portfolio from Crown Equipment Corporation, a complex in Signal Hill, and a small former Coca-Cola Vending warehouse in Torrance.

The Oak Park, Illinois-based firm also made one of the priciest acquisitions of the year when it bought a 264,450-square-foot complex in Carson from Century Distribution Systems in May. That was also a leaseback deal.

Ducommun said the deal netted the company $110 million in after-tax proceeds — it bought the property for just $541,000 in 1998.

“Industrial properties in the Southern California market are in extremely high demand right now, and the company is taking full advantage of it,” Ducommun President and CEO Stephen G. Oswald said in a statement.

The L.A.-area industrial market is among the strongest in the nation and lead the country in investment sales this year through October. Vacancy was just 1.4 percent at the end of the third quarter and is under 1 percent in some submarkets.

The South Bay market is especially tight because of proximity to the ports. A post-pandemic surge in e-commerce business has been a major factor in the tightening of the market.

[Bisnow] — Dennis Lynch