Avery Dennison to Consolidate, Move to Orange County

Office products giant Avery Dennison Corp. is moving 500 employees to a new five-story office building in Orange County from several locations throughout Southern California, the company said Wednesday.

Developer Olen Properties of Newport Beach has agreed to build an office building for Avery in Brea, as well as an adjacent 131,000-square-foot building. Avery Dennison signed a seven-year, $19.5-million lease and will move when the building is completed next spring.

Avery is moving its billion-dollar office products group from Diamond Bar. It will also move employees from facilities in Azusa, Ontario and its corporate headquarters in Pasadena.

“We wanted to move into one space, and we didn’t want to lose any of our employees,” said John S. Day, the company’s real estate director.

The company’s decision to lease space in a new building rather than existing offices underscores the shrinking availability of top-quality office space in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and the lack of buildings large enough to accommodate major companies, brokers said. The company had looked in the San Gabriel Valley and as far south as Orange.

“Larger tenants are having a harder time finding space,” said Rick Kaplan of Cushman Realty Corp., which represented Avery in the deal. “There are very few buildings of that size in the area.”

Brea’s office market has fared better than most north Orange County cities in recent years as companies have consolidated spread-out Southern California operations there.

Construction will start on the two glass and granite office buildings in coming weeks after the company obtains building permits from the city, said Olen President Igor Olenicoff. The twin structures, the first office buildings to be built in north Orange County in several years, will take nine months to build and will have a price tag of $28.5 million.

Olenicoff also agreed to build the second office building in the complex so that Avery can have room to expand, if needed. Avery will have right of first refusal on the second structure.

“Over the next three years, we will probably grow by around 10% to 12%,” said Stephanie Streeter, Avery group vice president. When that happens, she said, the company doesn’t want to move again.

Avery, which manufactures self-adhesive stamps for the U.S. Postal Service and other products, is the second large company to announce major moves to Brea this year. Previously, BankAmerica Corp., said it would move about 2,500 employees to a vacant facility owned by the company.

The new office buildings are just one of several office and industrial projects that Olenicoff is building in Southern California. He also has begun construction on a research and development park in Irvine and a paint facility for Gulfstream at Long Beach International Airport.