AMB Sells Site at SoCal Business Park to Credit Union for HQ

AMB Property Corp. is continuing to make deals for parcels in its 120-acre AMB Pacific Coast Business Park in Oceanside, Calif., with the recent sale of a 6.5-acre site to Pacific Marine Credit Union for a new headquarters. PMCU plans to build a two-story, 60,000-square-foot office building on the parcel located at the intersection of Old Grove Road and College Boulevard, according to an AMB Property news release. The ground floor will include a retail credit union branch and ATM locations with general and administrative offices taking up the rest of the space. The 55-year-old credit union, originally known as Camp Pendleton Federal Credit Union, serves Marines, Sailors and civilian employees in southern California. It has more than 73,000 members and 10 branches. The PMCU parcel is near an eight-acre site that LW Properties is developing as an 11-building medical office complex, according to the Feb. 11, 2008, edition of the San Diego Business Journal. Ten single-story buildings ranging in size from 4,900 to 5,500 square feet along with a two-story, 27,318-square-foot building are being developed on that parcel and are expected to be completed by the middle of 2009. The first phase of a three-phase buildout includes 14 buildings in a total of 203,000 square feet and is expected to cost about $25 million, Kim Snyder, AMB’s managing director for the Southwest region, told CPN. He said the total cost would be more than $100 million when the buildout is completed. In addition to the Pacific Marine Credit Union, other sales have been made to the Pacific Coast Medical Center and the Oceanside City Fire Department. “Our land sales program has been at a decent pace, with three meaningful sales. While the tenant market is unclear, we remain optimistic about user sales activity being robust in 2009 when the initial speculative product is delivered,” Snyder said. When completed, the business park will have 1.6 million square feet of industrial and office space, corporate headquarters and office and industrial condominiums. One of the last large development parcels in northern San Diego County, San Francisco-based AMB Property bought the site for $72.4 million in late 2006, according to an article in the Jan. 16, 2007, edition of the California Real Estate Journal detailing top deals of 2006. DWO Enterprises and Guthrie Development Co., who were part of the original ownership team, are developing the business park with AMB. The site is near Interstate-5. Snyder said the business park will also be attractive because it offers flexible zoning and flexible land use not readily available in northern San Diego County. He also noted that the city of Oceanside has attracted many high-image companies like Genentech, Ashworth and Titleist. Larry Strickland and Rusty Williams, principals in the San Diego-North office of Lee & Associates represented AMB in the PMCU deal. Kirk Allison and Vic Gausepohl of Colliers International represented PMCU. Strickland and Williams are the exclusive leasing agents for the AMB Pacific Coast Business Park. AMB is a global developer and owner of industrial real estate, focused on major hub and gateway distribution markets in North America, Europe and Asia. As of June 30, AMB owned or had investments in projects expected to total about 155.5 million square feet in 47 markets in 15 countries.