Firm’s Success Based on Quality : Ellis Sloan Burnett Bucks Trends in Its Developments
Overnight successes in the real estate industry are often triggered by good fortune and good timing, but “blue chip” reputations are harder to come by, and usually happen without fanfare.
Ellis Sloan Burnett Properties, Santa Monica, represents a segment of the industry in the commercial/industrial development sector--the smaller companies that have maintained a strong track record and steady stream of quality projects.
Usually working with a major investor partner but sometimes developing on their own, the partnership of Edward C. Ellis, Mark Sloan and Robert R. Burnett has completed 2.3 million square feet of diversified projects since 1977.
Currently in progress are preview showings and tours of Mission Oaks Business Center, the company’s just-completed, 82,000-square-foot, high-technology corporate headquarters/research and development facility in Camarillo.
Built on an extensively landscaped, 4.25-acre site within the 120-acre Mission Oaks Business Park, the two-story, high-image, tilt-up structure faces Camino Ruiz between Adolfo Road and Verdugo Way, and is a design of Leroy Miller & Associates of Santa Monica. It incorporates a 22,400-square-foot mezzanine that may be expanded to a full second floor.
Financing for Mission Oaks Business Center has been provided by First National Bank of Chicago. Lyle Parks Jr. Inc. of La Habra is the general contractor, and the Ventura office of Coldwell Banker Commercial Real Estate Services is the exclusive leasing agent.
Ellis Sloan Burnett is also involved in the development and management of the on-going, multi-phased $200-million Los Angeles Corporate Center in Monterey Park, is midway into construction of the Ontario Airport Business Park in the California Commercenter adjoining Ontario International Airport, and in the process of leasing Industry Business Center in City of Industry.
Company activity is geared to a hands-on team effort by its principals, each contributing a different set of skills.
Ellis, who is involved in overall planning, started in real estate as a broker for commercial, multifamily and industrial projects, served as president and chief executive officer of Pacific Coast Properties Inc. and founded Edward C. Ellis Associates in 1975, later renamed Ellis Sloan Burnett Properties.
Sloan, formerly with Kenneth Leventhal & Co., is the firm’s liaison with its major institutional partners and responsible for proper identification, acquisition and financial negotiations of properties.
Burnett, an architect with expertise in urban land economics and formerly with Kaiser Engineering in Oakland, was community planner for the UC San Diego campus. While involved with marketing and sales, Burnett’s primary responsibility is coordinating the development activities and directing architecture and construction.
“We don’t want a large organization,” Burnett said. “We keep sufficient staff so that the partners can be closely involved through development to lease-up or sale. We like to develop projects, not manage people. Development is what we enjoy, and we limit ourselves to working with only about 600,000 square feet at one time.”
“The team is always looking at additional properties, several hundred in fact, each year, and we like to develop both in new areas and in redevelopment areas,” Sloan explained.
“Los Angeles Corporate Center is a private redevelopment project for which no city funds were used. Ontario Airport Business Park, on the other hand, exemplifies a new area, multitenant complex, located in what we believe to be one of the fastest growing areas of California, with ample affordable housing to enhance the aspect of labor supply.”
The ESB team deliberately centers on “proven areas” and always looks for “a little something extra.”
That something extra, Sloan explained, is arrived at through market studies and gut feelings. “Being sensitive to a new area means getting the best possible location and sensing the overall growth potential. We examine hundreds of potential projects every year, and end up doing five or six.”
The location for Ontario Airport Business Park in the extensively landscaped, controlled environment of California Commercenter, is the best industrial area in the Rancho Cucamonga/Ontario area, Burnett added.
“It is also an extension of the Long Beach Harbor Free Trade Zone, an aspect that enhances our project there, and is within the Ontario International Airport Foreign Trade Zone,” Burnett said.
“In gearing the project for multitenant use, we have also created a project that is flexible, expandable and adaptable. We have several different-size buildings at the Ontario location and we can go down to 1,200 square feet in the multitenant phase.”
At the mid-point of its 10th anniversary, Ellis Sloan Burnett has 600,000 square feet of buildings under construction or in leasing, and 1,300,000 square feet leased and under management.
A solid base has been established with financial partners that include Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., (Los Angeles Corporate Center); Weyerhaeuser Mortgage Co., (Ontario Airport Business Park); Chase Manhattan Bank, (Industry Business Center); First National Bank of Chicago, (the research and development facility at Mission Oaks Business Park), as well as Union Bank with numerous other transactions.
The first project undertaken by the firm after its formation as Edward C. Ellis Associates in 1975, was a building at Alameda Street and Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles’ older industrial section. Ed Ellis, then heading all development for the firm, went beyond the norm for that area in exterior detailing and overall style; the building was leased to Federal Express and then sold to Security Pacific National Bank.
“With the Bixby Business Park in City of Industry, which we built in 1978, we introduced a park-like setting with distinctive buildings, bermed lawns, trees and flowers and circular drives. Most of what existed for lease at the time, were the raw tilt-ups,” Burnett recalled. That park was leased and subsequently sold to R & B Industries.
“Our requirements are specific,” Sloan stated. “For one thing, we run counter to the trends; we don’t like to follow the pack. When developers stumble over one another, they get into trouble.”
Major commercial brokerage firms such as Coldwell Banker, Cushman & Wakefield and Grubb & Ellis as well as independent brokers and smaller firms work closely with Ellis Sloan Burnett to locate developable properties.
When everybody was trying to get into downtown high-rises, ESB bought an old brickyard and started a corporate-quality development six miles from the city’s center, betting on the fact that in time corporate operations would have to move out of downtown and mid-Wilshire.
Los Angeles Corporate Center, Burnett noted, already has drawn to its community such prestigious firms as AT & T, Mobil Oil, General Electric Medical Systems Group, CalFed Insurance, Linn T. Hodge Insurance Agency, Southern California Gas Co., ITT Communications Systems.
“We hire the best architects and the best brokers we can find,” Burnett said. “We get them involved and welcome their input of client needs. Most of all, we listen to what they have to say. That has always paid off for us.”
