Industrial Buildings in Bell Sold for Nearly $100 Million
Institutional investors advised by Boston real estate investment manager Clarion Partners have purchased a large group of industrial buildings in Bell for nearly $100 million. The transaction reflects the strong demand for--and limited supply of--modern industrial buildings in the area southeast of downtown Los Angeles.
A variety of tenants occupy 97% of the 1.8 million square feet of space within the 14 buildings. Clarion’s investor clients acquired the buildings for $98.6 million from a group including another Boston real estate investment advisor, AEW Capital Management.
An institutional investment fund now managed by AEW originally developed the buildings in the 1980s in a joint venture with Trammell Crow Co.
The sale brokered by Cushman & Wakefield stems from the long-planned liquidation of that fund, said Hayden Eaves III, who was a Trammell Crow regional managing partner when the buildings were developed on the site of a former military base. The Cheli Army Air Force Base was a staging area for war materials shipped to the Pacific Theater during World War II.
Eaves is now a partner at Los Angeles-based Investment Development Services, which specializes in developing industrial and office properties on behalf of institutional investors.
Industrial real estate broker Mike Del Santo of CB Richard Ellis said the industrial real estate market in and around the cities of Bell, Commerce and Vernon has become a landlord’s market, with rents rising about 10% annually in recent years.
