Prologis buys 24-acre office campus in South OC

San Francisco-based REIT gets 322,262 sf in Lake Forest

Prologis's CEO Hamid Moghadam and CFO Tom Olinger (Drawbridge Realty, Prologis)
Prologis's CEO Hamid Moghadam and CFO Tom Olinger (Drawbridge Realty, Prologis)

Logistics specialist Prologis paid $96 million for a corporate office campus in Lake Forest.

The San Francisco-based real estate investment trust bought Pacific Vista, a cluster of five two-story office buildings on 24.4 acres at 25500-25550 Commercentre Dr., the Commercial Observer reported. Drawbridge Realty was the seller.

The 322,262-square-foot complex fetched $298 a square foot. The deal was announced by Chicago-based Cushman and Wakefield, which represented both the buyer and seller.

Drawbridge, a privately held firm based in San Francisco, acquired the property in 2017 for $76.2 million, property records show.

The Lake Forest property is now 76 percent leased, according to the Observer. Prologis plans to run the property as an office complex.

Orange County office vacancy is still high compared to before the coronavirus pandemic, at 16.6%, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s fourth-quarter report. Average asking rent for Class A office space was at $3.22 per square foot per month to start the new year.

Though most offices were still closed because of the pandemic in 2021, investor appetite for specific types of office properties was strong in Orange County and across Southern California.

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Las Vegas-based Kingsbarn Realty Capital paid $45.5 million in June for the headquarters of Del Taco, also in Lake Forest. The 155,795 square-foot Palm Terrace complex fetched $260 per square foot.

Kingsbarn also paid $45.5 million early this year for Fullerton Towers, a 230,000 square-foot office complex in north O.C.

The region’s top office deals included the 1-million square foot CBS Studio Center in Studio City for $1.85 billion, at $1,850 per square foot; the 97,400-square-foot DreamWorks Campus in Glendale for $327 million, at $657 per square foot; and the 576,000-square-foot Torrance Technology Campus in Torrance for $182 million, at $316 per square foot.

Prologis is among the world’s largest industrial REITS. The publicly traded firm has a market cap of $111.9 billion, according to Yahoo Finance.

In 2021, it produced a record $3.6 billion in industrial development, as demand continues to exceed supply. Its development pipeline is 70 percent pre-leased, “well above” the historic average, its executives say.

[CO] – Dana Bartholomew

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