Laura Scudder’s Site to Become a Business Park
In a deal estimated to be worth about $8 million, a Los Angeles development firm has acquired the site of the former Laura Scudder’s snack foods plant in Anaheim to build a mixed-use industrial-commercial-retail park.
Bowers Perez Associates, which has an Irvine office and has been active in the county for more than a decade, said it plans to tear down the 218,000-square-foot Laura Scudder’s facility and develop the 18.7-acre site as a business park with 300,000 square feet of single-story buildings.
Bowers Perez said it will spend $25 million to buy and develop the property at 1525 N. Raymond Ave. The company would not disclose the price it paid for the parcel.
Real estate industry sources familiar with the area said, however, that the site probably sold for $7.5 million to $8 million, or $9 to $10 a square foot. The costs of demolishing the existing food processing facility and cleaning up the site would have kept the selling price below the $12-per-square-foot norm for vacant industrial land in the area, said the sources, who asked to remain unidentified.
Bowers Perez said it intends to build 140,000 square feet of buildings that will be sold outright and 160,000 square feet that will be leased to tenants.
Laura Scudder’s, which opened the plant in 1960, was acquired by Borden Inc. in September, 1987. A month later, Borden announced that it was closing the aging Anaheim headquarters and processing plant and consolidating the Laura Scudder’s operations at a newer facility in Utah.
About 300 workers were laid off when the plant was closed in May and the facility was offered for sale.
Bowers Perez, which plans to call the redeveloped parcel the Raymond Commerce Center, has been developing the 46-acre Von Karman Corporate Center in Irvine in the past 6 years and recently developed the Hughes Microelectronics facility in the industrial park at Rancho Santa Margarita.
David Kray, acquisitions director for Bowers Perez, said the developer’s financial backer for the Anaheim project is a private investor who has asked to remain unidentified.
Kray said because of its size and location next to the Riverside Freeway, competition for the Anaheim parcel was heated, with at least six firms submitting bids.
In a prepared statement, Bowers Perez said construction will begin in the second quarter, with the first phase ready for occupancy by the end of the year.
There will be some commercial and retail space in the new center, but the development will have a strong industrial orientation aimed at smaller companies, Kray said.
His firm’s studies show that there is a pent-up demand for industrial facilities as small as 1,200 square feet in the Anaheim area and that manufacturers with the need for large facilities are looking toward Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where land and construction costs are lower, Kray said.
A major appeal of the Laura Scudder’s site, he said, is its central location, with access on the Riverside Freeway to Los Angeles and the Inland Empire.
