Shoe company Pleaser USA has bought a new, 269,800-square-foot warehouse in Walnut for $99.9 million for its corporate headquarters and business operations.
An affiliate of the Brea-based firm bought the West Valley Logistics Center at 4200 West Valley Boulevard, in the San Gabriel Valley, Commercial Observer and the Los Angeles Business Journal reported.
The seller was developer CapRock Partners, based in Newport Beach, which completed the building in December.
The deal works out to $370 per square foot. Brokers Matt Moore, Wes Hunnicutt and Michael Torres of Stream Realty Partners represented CapRock Partners in the deal. Mike Hartel and Nick Velasquez of Colliers represented the buyer.
It was among the largest purchases by a tenant user in Los Angeles County over the last couple of years, brokers said.
“While the leasing market in east San Gabriel Valley remains sluggish, we are witnessing increased demand from owner-occupiers for quality building acquisitions,” Hunnicutt said in a statement to CO. “West Valley Logistics represents a Class A building in a prime location that will be very difficult to duplicate in the future with increased building regulations.”
In October, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 98, which regulates warehouse construction across the region. It came as a response to an Inland Empire warehouse boom of buildings of up to 1 million square feet, with trucks that bring pollution, traffic and noise to local neighborhoods.
The Walnut warehouse, designed by Newport Beach-based Douglas Franz Architects, contains 14 docks and a two-story section with 10,000 square feet of offices.
CapRock bought the 12.5-acre site in 2020 for an undisclosed price.
“This is a brand new, Class A industrial building that we developed with the intention to lease the property, but we were able to execute a successful sale to an owner-user,” Taylor Arnett, senior vice president of acquisitions at CapRock Partners, told the Business Journal. “It was a large owner-user transaction and that’s pretty unique.”
Industrial vacancy in the San Gabriel Valley rose to 5.8 percent in the fourth quarter, up from 3.9 a year earlier, according to JLL. The asking rent was $1.46 a square foot, 3 cents below the county average.
About 3 million square feet of industrial warehouses or manufacturing buildings were sold or leased, up from 2.6 million square feet a year earlier. But the vacancy rate is still historically low, while asking rents are high.
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