Rexford Buys Los Angeles Industrial Campus for $182M

3100 Lomita Boulevard, part of Torrance Technology Campus. Photo courtesy of Newmark

Rexford Industrial has acquired Torrance Technology Campus, a 27-acre industrial campus in Torrance, Calif., for approximately $182 million. A private investor sold the 575,976-square-foot asset.

A Newmark team, led by Co-Head of U.S. Capital Markets Kevin Shannon, Senior Managing Director Scott Schumacher and Executive Managing Director Ken White, represented the seller. Rexford Industrial was self represented.

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According to CommercialEdge data, the five-building campus last traded in 2018, with the private investor paying $106.6 million for an 86 percent interest in the property. Maxus Properties acquired the remaining 14 percent ownership stake for $17.4 million. That deal was financed with a $93.8 million CMBS loan provided by Argentic.

Torrance Technology Campus is located at 3100 to 3110 Lomita Blvd. and 3121 Skypark Drive. The buildings were constructed between 1966 and 1984 and renovated in 2017. The campus features four grade-level and three truck well loading doors, ESFR sprinklers, an HVAC system and a parking ratio of 2.7 spaces per 1,000 square feet.

The property is adjacent to the Torrance Memorial Medical Center, a short distance northeast of the intersection of State Route 107 and the Pacific Coast Highway. Torrance Technology Campus was 90 percent leased at the time of sale, with L3Harris occupying 80 percent of the space. The tech company and defense contractor invested more than $40 million of infrastructure improvements at the campus in 2016, when it expanded its operations and extended its lease.

Coastal market strength

Investors and developers in the Los Angeles market have increasingly sought opportunities like this one as a nod to potential redevelopment plans, said Newmark’s Schumacher in a prepared statement. The market’s extremely limited availability continues to drive rent increases: A recent CommercialEdge report found that Los Angeles’ industrial rents have grown the fastest in the nation, up 6.7 percent year-over-year through June. Furthermore, vacancies continue to be the tightest in West Coast markets like Los Angeles, where they reached 3.5 percent in June, second only to the Inland Empire’s record low of 1.6 percent.

Rexford Industrial continues to solidify its presence as a major player in the Los Angeles industrial market, where it owns more than 22 million square feet of such space, according to CommercialEdge. The current sale comes on the heels of several other large transactions. In June, Rexford paid $94 million for The Box Yard, an East Los Angeles creative industrial campus. Last month, the company signed Lief Labs at its upcoming 111,260-square-foot speculative facility in Valencia, Calif.