In a Flash, Sares-Regis Lands Beer Distributor for 280,000-SF Anaheim Industrial Building

October 25, 2010
By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

Just three months after having acquired the 280,000-square-foot distribution center at 4663 La Palma Avenue in Anaheim, California, Sares-Regis Group has filled up the formerly vacant building in one fell swoop. Straub Distributing Co. Ltd., eager to consolidate and expand accommodations for its distribution of Budweiser and other imported beers, signed a 15-year lease to occupy the facility in its entirety.

Situated just off the Riverside Freeway in Orange County, about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles, 4663 La Palma made its debut in 2001. Sares-Regis has a history with the property. The company acquired the distribution center in 2007 for $281 per square-foot, sold it in late 2008, and two years later, took ownership once again by buying the note one day before foreclosure for $100 per square-foot, a price 30 percent less than what it paid for the building at the height of the real estate market.

Good luck and good timing appear to be a central theme in Sares-Regis’s association with 4663 La Palma. Nary a tenant graced the roster when the company took ownership of the distribution center for the second time with the notion that lease-up with either a single tenant or multiple occupants could take 18 months. But it seems the company had just barely gotten the keys to the door when Straub knocked. “They came to us,” Larry Lukanish, a vice president with Sares-Regis, told CPE. “The special servicer had been marketing the property and Straub was tracking it. They approached us shortly after we bought the note.”

Sares-Regis relied on real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis to orchestrate the 15-year lease agreement with Straub, which will take occupancy at 4663 La Palma in April 2011. The deal will allow the beer distributor to consolidate operations at its three different Orange County locations under one roof and add approximately 70,000 square feet of elbow room. The deal certainly boosts absorption, but it also adds an aggregate 200,000 square feet vacant to Orange County’s industrial portfolio. While the Orange County industrial market’s vacancy rate is relatively low–4.6 percent, according to CBRE’s third quarter report–three-month lease-ups don’t happen every day. “We got lucky,” Lukanish admits.