Scully Enterprises Buys the Centerpiece of Business Center
Scully Enterprises Inc., a fast-growing Camarillo manufacturer and retailer of leather products, has purchased a two-building office complex that is the centerpiece of the Channel Islands Business Center, a vast Oxnard development that was partly taken over by Wells Fargo Bank.
Purchase price of the 72,000-square-foot complex was not disclosed, but Wells Fargo originally asked $3.7 million when the pair of mirrored structures were placed on the market in 1992. “All I can say is that the price was less than that,” said Paul Farry, a broker with Ventura-based TOLD Partners Inc., which represented both the buyers and sellers.
Privately held Scully will move its administrative and marketing units into both two-story buildings on the 8.4-acre site, consolidating operations now located in Camarillo, Northridge and Northern California. Scully Enterprises has 300 employees, 75 of whom will move into the buildings on Pacific Avenue, just off Pacific Coast Highway in south Oxnard.
The property is part of a 225-acre business park developed in the 1980s by John B. Gilbert and his TOLD Corp. Caught in the commercial real estate squeeze of recent years, Gilbert struck a deal to cancel TOLD Corp.’s debts by deeding 25 of the sprawling center’s 56 buildings to a subsidiary of his main lender, Wells Fargo. About 70% of the Wells Fargo property has now been sold.
Scully Enterprises, like TOLD Corp., has had its ups and downs.
The leather concern was founded in Napa in 1906 by the grandfather of its current president, Dan Scully. Initially a glove maker, the company expanded and eventually helped outfit Adm. Richard E. Byrd’s first Antarctic expedition in 1928. The firm later moved to Downtown Los Angeles, where it turned out jackets for U. S. aviators during World War II. But Scully Enterprises fell on hard times in the postwar years, making a comeback only when it began producing high-fashion items such as leather pants.
The company has its marketing and administrative offices in Ventura County. The manufacture of its leather goods are done in Northern California, in other states and overseas. The company’s wide variety of leather goods includes jackets, luggage and briefcases that are marketed nationwide through department stores and Leather Bound, a wholly owned chain of specialty outlets.
Scully expects the move to be completed sometime in March.
Scully declined to disclose his company’s revenues, but said sales have increased 20% in each of the last three years.
