Warland Scores 215 KSF Tenant in Orange County

5560 Katella Ave.

Romeo Power, a commercial vehicle battery manufacturer, has signed a 215,000-square-foot, eight-year lease for a Class A manufacturing facility in Cypress, Calif. CBRE worked on behalf of the landlord, Warland Investments.

Romeo Power is currently occupying a 113,240-square-foot facility at 4380 Ayers Ave. in Vernon, Calif., some 20 miles from the new location. The headquarter expansion will allow the tenant to double its laboratory and testing capacity once the move is completed in the next six to nine months.

Orange County’s tight market

According to a report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the tenant agreed to a monthly rent of $210,700 during the first year, the equivalent of $0.98 per square foot. The rent is slightly under Orange County’s second-quarter average of $1.13 per square foot, CBRE data shows.

With vacancy at a low 3.5 percent as of August and rents up 4.1 percent year-over-year, Orange County’s industrial market is recording some of the strongest fundamentals across the U.S., strongly boosted by the spillover effects of the Los Angeles and Inland Empire markets, a recent CommercialEdge report shows. What’s more, adding to already high industrial demand, record-breaking activity in U.S. ports is pushing rents up and driving vacancy rates down in port markets.

A new base

Built in 1998, the Class A facility at 5560 Katella Ave. occupies 9.2 acres in the 200-acre Warland Cypress Business Center. The industrial park is also home to a Rolls-Royce power systems development center and Mitsubishi manufacturing facility.

The new Romeo Power headquarters includes a two-story office component totaling 24,000 square feet and 191,000 square feet of industrial space. The property offers 30-foot clear heights, 19 dock-high loading doors, four grade-level doors, a 125-foot truck court, as well as a parking ratio of one space per 1,000 square feet.

The warehouse is part of the Cypress Business Park masterplan, situated within a 20-mile drive from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles and 7 miles east of the Long Beach Airport. The property offers convenient access to interstates 405 and 605.