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Overhaul Attracts Tenants to Former GM Digs

General Motors Co.’s former western headquarters in Thousand Oaks has a new life as a multitenant building, and is about 55 percent leased. Walnut Creek real estate investor Nearon Enterprises bought the nearly 63,000-square-foot office building at 515 Marin St. in 2014 for $6 million, according to CoStar Group Inc. Last May, the company finished a multi-million-dollar renovation to get the 31-year-old building ready for its next phase. Now called Valle Vista, the two-story structure on 3.5-acres received new air conditioning, common area floors, upgraded stairwells, new paint, solid wood doors, landscaping and a new fountain by the front entrance. Mark Leonard, a principal at Lee & Associates-LA North/Ventura, who brokered the building’s sale to Nearon and now handles its leasing, said the main draw for Nearon was how quickly and easily it could convert the structure from a single-tenant into a multitenant property. “The way that General Motors operated there it wasn’t as a traditional single-tenant user in how it built out its floor plans,” Leonard said. “It was already designed as a multitenant office building.” While typical single-tenant buildings have open floorplans divided only by cubicles, General Motors had subdivided the floors into separate areas connected by common hallways, he said. That meant Nearon didn’t have to spend lots of money subdividing the space and constructing hallways, Leonard said. Instead, it put money into modifying some of the existing suites, making tenant improvements and renovations. The newest tenant is Enterprise-Rent-A-Car, which hasn’t yet moved into its 9,000-square-feet space. It’s migrating from the Warner Center in Woodland Hills. Other tenants include drug developer ADRx Inc., Revolution Financial Management and a law firm, Slack & Associates, according to Nearon’s website. Leonard said the strategy to attract tenants has been to offer lease rates lower than those in Westlake Village. Nearon is offering $2.45, compared to Westlake’s $2.65 a square foot to $3.20, he said, and has also paid, in some cases, for portions of tenants’ moving expenses. New Industrial Space A wall-tilting – think barn-raising but with giant concrete walls moved by cranes – created three new industrial buildings recently in Valencia totaling nearly 255,000 square feet and named the Valencia Gateway V. AEW Capital Management L.P. in Boston, Mass. and Sheridan Ebbert Development in Valencia partnered to buy the lots on 13 acres at 27909, 27859, and 27811 Hancock Parkway from Gateway V. They sit within the Valencia Commerce Center, the largest master-planned industrial center in L.A. County, according to L.A.’s CBRE Group Inc. Construction is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2017, CBRE said. The buildings are being offered for sale or for lease, said Craig Peters, who, along with Doug Sonderegger of CBRE, brokered the land sale in April on behalf of both parties and will be handling the subsequent leases or sales. Potential users of the buildings would be aerospace and defense companies, sound stages and support facilities for entertainment industry, technology, medical device and biomedical companies and distributors of consumer products, Peters said. Each building offers dock-high loading, ceilings with a minimum clear height of 28 feet, high-performance fire sprinkler systems and 480/277-volt power. The size of the structures are 105,000 square feet, 89,000 square feet and nearly 61,000 square feet. With the higher ceiling clearances, tenants can stack more product and therefore use less real estate, Peters said. “It allows companies to operate with a higher level of efficiency and a higher level of productivity than those that are in buildings that are functionally obsolete,” he said. “That means very real savings.” In Simi Valley, another large industrial project also recently broke ground. Four buildings totaling 141,000 square feet and ranging in size from 30,000 square feet to 42,000 square feet are under construction at The Point @ Simi Valley Business Center by Gardena developer Overton Moore Properties. The structures at 161 Cochran St. offer ceilings with minimum clearance heights of between 26 feet and 28 feet and high-performance sprinkler systems. Overton bought the property from Coca-Cola Co. in 2015 in a deal brokered by Bennett Robinson, an executive vice president at CBRE, who represented both parties. Overton paid about $4 million for 11.4 acres, according to CoStar. Construction is estimated to finish in April of 2017, and the buildings are being offered for lease or sale. Staff Reporter Carol Lawrence can be reached at (818) 316-3123 or [email protected].

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