Startup Saltbox Opens Los Angeles Flex Facility
The company raised $10.6 million in venture capital financing earlier this year.
Startup company Saltbox, a warehouse and office space provider for small and medium e-commerce businesses, has opened its first Los Angeles location in a 45,000-square-foot industrial building in Torrance, Calif. The expansion comes after the company closed Series A of venture capital financing in April, raising $10.6 million. The investor list includes XYZ Venture Capital and Wilshire Lane Partners.
The facility at 2335 W. 208th St., formerly dubbed Torrance Technology Center, is owned by Frontline Holdings. The company acquired the 1989-built property in March this year for $10.7 million. The Klabin Co. represented the seller in the transaction, while Savills Inc. worked on behalf of the buyer. At the time of the acquisition, Frontline announced it had already secured a tenant for the asset, a Klabin Co. press release indicated.
The Torrance building has been subdivided into 100 flexible warehouse units and office suites that offer local entrepreneurs conference rooms, photo studios, access to loading docks as well as dedicated logistics services. The location offers flexible month-to-month terms and coworking memberships. The property is some 20 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles.
The best of both worlds
The company opened its first location in 2019 in Atlanta and has since expanded to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and Seattle. A fifth Saltbox facility is slated to open in Denver this year. The company’s expansion plans come at a time when the pandemic is accelerating demand for flex office spaces and pushing the expansion of e-commerce.
Saltbox’s fourth location is in one of the nation’s leading markets for both industrial and office space demand. Industrial space rents in Greater Los Angeles grew by 5.7 percent in the 12 months ending in October, reaching an average price of $10.20 per square foot, a recent CommercialEdge report shows. When it come to the office sector, Los Angeles registered the highest rent increase across all major markets in September. Asking rates were up 8.1 percent from the same month last year, while vacancy remained 190 basis points bellow the 14.9 percent national average.
