Transwestern Sells Inland Empire Asset for $58M

I-215 Commerce Center. Photo courtesy of Transwestern.

An investor advised by New York-based Zurich Alternative Asset Management has acquired a fully leased industrial property in Colton, Calif., from Transwestern Investment Group. According to public documents filed with San Bernardino County Recorder’s Office, the property traded for $57.5 million.

TIG broke ground on I-215 Commerce Center more than a year ago, when it also obtained a $17.1 million construction loan provided by Coamerica Bank. The developer hired Fullmer Construction as general contractor and RGI as architect. CBRE provided leasing services for the property.

I-215 Commerce Center is a 225,353-square-foot warehouse situated at 1648 Ashley Way in the San Bernardino submarket. The building features 32-foot clear heights, one grade-level and 28 dock-high loading doors, 33 trailer parking stalls and an ESFR sprinkler system.

The single-tenant warehouse’s location allows for immediate access to interstates 215 and 10, as well as state routes 60 and 91. San Bernardino International Airport is about 8 miles north of the property.

CBRE’s Darla Longo, Barbara Perrier and the National Partners West team represented TIG in the transaction, while ZAAM was represented by Chris Edgar and Sean Bannon.

Inland Empire remains on top

I-215 Commerce Center loading bay. Photo courtesy of Transwestern

CommercialEdge data indicates that the transaction ranks as one of the highest-priced industrial sales in San Bernardino this year. I-215 Commerce Center traded at approximately $255.2 per square foot, which is 41 percent above the Inland Empire’s average price per square foot for all recorded year-to-date industrial sales through August, at $180.8 per square foot.

Southern California continues to be a hotbed of activity for industrial assets. A CommercialEdge report shows that the Inland Empire, Los Angeles and Orange County markets combined to account for more than 15 percent of all industrial sales volume this year as of August. The Inland Empire alone generated sales of $2.28 billion over the first eight months of the year.

In a prepared statement, TIG Vice President Ryan Grable noted that high leasing volumes in the Inland Empire coupled with rising replacement costs created the sale opportunity. CommercialEdge data shows that the metro’s industrial demand is one of the strongest in the U.S., with rents increasing by 6.6 percent year-over-year.

Speculative construction continues in the land-constrained Inland Empire. The market had more than 22 million square feet underway as of August, according to the same report. Last month, Alere Property Group announced plans to construct 12 buildings in Chino, Calif., amounting to 626,000 square feet of industrial space.

In June, a partnership of Shopoff Realty Investments and Artemis Real Estate broke ground on a 1.8 million-square-foot logistics center in Riverside County. Developers received a $105 million construction loan from Bank OZK for the project, which is slated to come online in the summer of 2022.