DAUM Closes 82 KSF Lease in Tight Santa Monica Market

1100 Colorado Ave. Photo courtesy of DAUM Commercial

DAUM Commercial Real Estate has negotiated the lease of an 82,000-square-foot warehouse and office property in the Santa Monica submarket of Los Angeles. The new tenant, a major electric vehicle company, agreed on a long-term commitment, paying approximately $12 million for the space.

Vice Chairman Michael Collins together with Executive Vice President David Freitag of DAUM Commercial represented the owner—a private entity active in the Southern California industrial market.

The new tenant is expected to occupy the space next quarter and will subsequently make extensive renovations and upgrades, Collins told Commercial Property Executive. The building is slated to offer maintenance, repair, delivery and charging for electric vehicles. Caliber Collision, an auto body repair and paint shop, was the previous tenant of the property for 20 years.

The building is located at 1100 Colorado Ave. on a 121,200-square-foot site. The warehouse, built in 1971, features an 18-foot clear height, a wrought-iron fence, 2,000 amps of extensive power and a parking ratio of 1.6/1,000.

The space at 1100 Colorado Ave. provides an opportunity for the new tenant to potentially expand to a total of about 132,000 square feet in the following years. An adjacent, 50,000-square-foot property, owned by the same entity, is currently leased to Mercedes-Benz. Other nearby businesses include Lexus, Amazon, HBO and Universal Music.

Southern California industrial is booming

Despite a tumultuous year, industrial demand had a strong run in 2020. Over the last 12 months, markets in South California have seen some of the highest rent hikes in the country. Year-over-year through February, rates in the Inland Empire were up 9.2 percent, while Los Angeles rents grew by 7.8 percent, outperforming the national 5.1 percent figure, a recent CommercialEdge report shows. Vacancy rates in Los Angeles (4.4 percent) and the Inland Empire (2.5 percent) were also some of the lowest in the country as of February.

“The Southern California industrial market has been very strong for the past 10 years. The overall L.A. county industrial vacancy today is approximately 2 percent,” DAUM’s Collins told CPE. “This 82,000-square-foot building [1100 Colorado Ave.] was the largest industrial building available in Santa Monica. So, it was not only unique, in that it was in a prime market with limited industrial, but it was the largest building in the market,” he added.