Japanese Firm Buys 24 Buildings in Southland

In one of the largest sales of industrial property in the state this year, Koll Co. of Newport Beach sold 24 industrial buildings throughout Southern California for $138 million to Fujita Corp. USA, a Japanese developer with U.S. headquarters in Santa Monica.

Scher-Voit Commercial Brokerage in Irvine, the broker on the deal, said about half the properties were in Orange County. The deal also included warehouse, light industrial and research and development buildings in San Diego, Los Angeles and the San Francisco area.

The total amount of space involved was 1.8 million square feet.

Among the larger properties sold were a Garden Grove business park at Garden Grove Boulevard and Western Avenue and the Toshiba building in Irvine with 118,000 square feet of space.

Koll is a huge real estate developer that occasionally sells buildings from its $4 billion in West Coast real estate holdings.

Fujita USA, though it has operated in the U.S. since 1972, is only a small player in the California real estate market. The company specializes in industrial buildings--preferring to stay away from what it says is an overbuilt office market--and until now had owned only 13 buildings in the state.

Fujita is a larger player in the Japanese real estate market, where it owns and develops property as well as doing engineering and construction.

Industrial buildings are often a good investment in California’s urban areas because land is so expensive that few new factories or research and development buildings are being constructed. That means landlords have less competition for tenants in some areas.

Fujita USA said several other buyers had been interested in the Koll buildings since they went on the block about three months ago, but declined to identify them.