County Loses Out on a Major Office Lease

For Orange County developers, it was the one that got away: Los Angeles Cellular Telephone Co. had been cruising the county for 90,000 square feet of office space but parked just over the county line in Cerritos.

LA Cellular said Monday that it would relocate its headquarters--and 400 employees--into six floors of a seven-story building at Cerritos Towne Center, a master-planned development built by Torrance’s Transpacific Development Co. The move is planned for this fall.

The company had been looking for a site from which it could cover both Los Angeles and Orange counties, it said. Real estate brokers said the company looked at several buildings in Orange County but decided in favor of the Cerritos project, which the company said was centrally located and would give it room to expand.

The need for 90,000 square feet of space would have made it one of the larger office leases signed in Orange County in the past few years.

While the lease is a big one, it’s probably more an anomaly than a sign that the office market is reviving significantly. Lately, the stream of tenants into Orange County has dwindled, leaving landlords beating the bushes for tenants in an overbuilt market.