TA Acquires Cerritos Complex

In one of the larger single-property industrial real estate sales in Southern California this year, Boston-based institutional advisor TA Associates Realty has acquired the Cerritos Industrial Park on behalf of its institutional investor clients.

The business park includes almost 1 million square feet of industrial space within 30 buildings that are 100% leased to 54 tenants, according to Vice President Rick McGeagh of property services giant CB Richard Ellis. The 20-year-old business park is within the triangle bounded by the 91, 605 and 5 freeways.

Neither McGeagh nor Jim Buckingham, TA’s West Coast director of acquisitions, would disclose the price TA’s clients paid to seller RREEF Funds, another major pension fund and institutional advisor. However, industrial real estate sources used other recent sales “comparables” in estimating that the property probably fetched more than $50 per square foot--which would put the price above $50 million.

McGeagh and CB’s Steve Batcheller, who have been leasing Cerritos Industrial Park for a decade, will keep those responsibilities under the new ownership. The two agents and their CB colleagues Darla Longo and Jeff Morgan brokered the sale.

McGeagh said that tenant demand remains strong in the so-called Mid-Cities industrial real estate marketplace, which is seeing several substantial speculative business-park and build-to-suit (customized for tenants) developments. The market is on pace this year to set a record for absorption, a measure of overall growth in the amount of space that businesses occupy, he said.

Although investment activity by publicly traded real estate investment trusts has waned in recent months as Wall Street has shied away from its previous aggressive posture, McGeagh said several REITs as well as institutional-type investors competed for the Cerritos business park.

TA has about $3.5 billion in assets under management nationwide. Buckingham said TA’s portfolio of mostly industrial and office properties in Southern California is approaching 4 million square feet.