In the past year, the seafood district of Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) got a PR boost from some local seafood company owners and artists. Below is the vision they have set forth.
During the 1920’s, a relatively unknown, approximately twenty-acre northern section in the sprawling Los Angeles Industrial District was home to a concentrated number of businesses with names like American Fish, Holly Seafood and Central Fish & Oyster Company. With mottos like “If it swims, we have it!”, many of these family-operated companies were owned by Japanese, Italian and Irish immigrants who specialized in commercial fishing, processing, distribution and cross-pacific imports. Their smokehouses and cold storage facilities provided to local restaurants, hotels, airports, grocery stores, and civic institutions throughout Southern California.
In the late 1970’s, economic migration pushed the greater Industrial District near the brink of urban decay. Yet, dozens of these original seafood businesses remained and continued to operate, only hidden behind secure walls and fences. Sadly, their colorful, oceanic history faded while façades and sidewalks gradually fell into various states of disrepair.
In 2017, a close group of neighbors, including a handful of the 100 year-old seafood companies still owned by the original founders’ families, has come together to reclaim our neighborhood’s lost identity as “The North Sea.” We have launched a self-funded, beautification program involving thematic murals, sidewalk landscaping, a variety of sculptural interventions, and lots and lots of elbow grease. Our mission is to restore a sense of place and community pride. We hope you enjoy our results. Please come visit us soon. [excerpted from http://www.northseadtla.net/]
Over the past 24 years, we have leased and sold many buildings for the seafood industry on DTLA streets such as Kohler, Gladys, Alameda, Ceres, Crocker, Stanford and 5th. Although the areas is encompassed by Skid Row, the merchants do their business despite all the indigents and their filth.
DTLA Brick Building for lease. 5,600 square foot warehouse that includes 2,000 SF of air conditioned (HVAC) rooms. Natural light via skylights and beautiful brick walls. Cool steel framed windows. 14′ high ceiling. Perfect for creative uses. 400 amp single phase power. 3-5 year lease term.
Located across from live/work units, artists, architects, fashion design, creative uses. Just south of Bread Lounge, future Soho House club, Stumptown coffee, Warner Music at Ford Building.
In DTLA Arts District. Santa Fe Ave / 10 freeway. (growers prohibited). See flyer for more information. FLYER-2449.Hunter.St.UnitA
COMMERCIAL KITCHEN, COMMISSARY, BAKERY, FOOD PREP BUILDING available for sale including all kitchen, baking, and cooking equipment. Building converted to food production in 2006 so equipment is in good condition.
+ 1,446 SF Freezers & 2,074 SF Coolers
+ USDA, FDA & Organic Blast Cooler & Blast Freezer
+ 8,350 SF Food Processing, Floor Drains, Hoods
+ Dock High Loading, Fenced Yard
Rare opportunity to purchase a quality food commissary with dock high loading to accommodate a 53 foot container. Fenced parking lot in rear, with additional parking on north side and ample street parking for overflow. Multiple hoods in kitchen, blast cooler, blast freezer, two storage freezers, two storage coolers, ice machine, waste interceptor with sewer discharge rights, laundry room, dish room, employee break/lunch room, QA/QC lab and test kitchen. Sloped floors with clean trench and circular drains. Baking ovens.
26,000 square foot building with a bonus 5,000 square feet of upstairs offices and storage. Minutes from a major freeway in Southern California. Great for bakery, co-packer, sauces, soups, meal prep and delivery, restaurant catering, meat, poultry, seafood processing etc… For more information contact exclusive real estate listing agent, Matthew 323-767-2033, BRE #01188251.
The Alameda Corridor is a 20-mile railroad “expressway” that connects the World Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach with the national rail system. The Corridor began operating in April 2002 and its main purpose was to alleviate truck traffic on local freeways and create a more efficient way to move cargo containers from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to the Downtown Los Angeles rail yards. Effectively, the Corridor has created an efficient solution to get cargo containers from the Ports to major inland distribution points in the Inland Empire and as far east as Kansas City and Chicago. As of April 2016, the Alameda Corridor was handling an average of almost 36 trains per day and over 11,000 TEU’S. The Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority (ACTA) owns and operates the Corridor and charges user fees to the railroads on a per-TEU basis.
The five-county Greater Los Angeles region represents the largest industrial market in the nation with approximately 1.0 BSF, connected by the region’s modern sea ports, highways, railways and airports. The region historically has boasted the strongest market
fundamentals in the country relating to rents, vacancy and availability rates and pricing. In Greater Los Angeles, the overall vacancy rate was 1.2% as of the fourth quarter of 2017. The market also generated 9.3 MSF of gross activity in the fourth quarter.
Industrial is 1 of 4 commercial property types (Industrial, Retail, Office and Multi-family) and is a broad category encompassing many different types of buildings with the most common being warehousing and distribution or manufacturing. Below are brief descriptions of 9 industrial property types.
Warehouse / Distribution
Industrial warehouse and distribution building for Amazon.
Warehousing & Distribution buildings are very large, single-story structures used primarily for warehousing and the distribution of business inventory. These buildings range from 5,000 to hundreds of thousands of square feet under roof and have up to 60-foot ceiling heights to accommodate extensive racking and storage systems. These buildings may have a small amount of office space as numerous loading docks, truck doors and large surface parking lots to semi-trailers. Some buildings may be served by rail cars.
Manufacturing
Industrial food manufacturing building producing meals for delivery in Downtown Los Angeles
Manufacturing facilities (also called heavy industrial buildings) are designed to house specialized equipment used to produce goods or materials. In addition to providing three-phase high capacity, electric power, these industrial properties may include heavy ductwork, pressurized air or water lines, buss ducts, high capacity ventilation and exhaust systems, floor drains, storage tanks and cranes. A subset of this is food manufacturing which often includes refrigeration, clarifiers, boilers, sloped floors for drainage, and other specialized food facility equipment.
Refrigeration/Cold Storage
Lineage Cold Storage, Vernon, CA
Refrigeration/Cold Storage are specialized industrial buildings that offer large capacity cold storage such as cooler (34 deg F) and freezer (-10 to 0 deg F) rooms. They are often used as a distribution center for food products such as meat, produce, prepared meals, dairy, etc…
Flex or Showroom
Media Centre Drive
This versatile building type (short for “Flexible”) covers a broad range of uses and often is used to combine one or more uses in a single facility, including office space, research and development, showroom retail sales, light manufacturing research and development (R&D) and even small warehouse and distribution uses. Because of this versatility, flex buildings are sometimes listed as separate category. Flex buildings typically have ceiling heights under 18 feet and have a higher percentage of office space than larger industrial buildings.
Telecom / Data Hosting Centers
CoreSite Data Center in DTLA
These are highly specialized industrial buildings located in close proximity to major communications trunk lines with access to an extremely large and redundant power supply capable of powering extensive computer servers and telecom switching equipment. These buildings have reinforced floor slabs capable of supporting the weight of the electrical and computer equipment as well as backup generators, and specialized HVAC. They may also include raised flooring to handle cooling and extensive cabling. These buildings may also be called Switching Centers, Cyber Centers, Web Hosting Facilities and Telecom Centers.
R&D (Research and Development)
Google Westside Pavilion in Los Angeles, common open campus that internet tech companies like
Flex buildings are popular in high technology industries such as computers, electronics and biotechnology because they effective support a hybrid of office, manufacturing and warehouse space housed in a single location. Often these types of space users prefer locating in campus-like business parks featuring extensive landscaping, shared architecture design, and lots of surface parking and open space.
Biotech (Wet Lab)
Biotech buildings are highly specialized flex buildings that support a range of laboratory space where chemicals, drugs or other material or biological matter are tested and analyzed. This type of building requires extensive plumbing and water distribution, direct ventilation and specialized piped utilities. In addition, some may offer accurate temperature and humidity controls, dust control, and heavy power. Often these types of buildings are located together in campus-like fashion with extensive landscaping, extensive surface parking and open space.
Soundstages – Film & TV Production Studios
Very high clearance Audio Video Soundstage – film and streaming television production
Soundstages are newly constructed and other times developers retrofit existing industrial buildings. These facilities typically have ceiling heights over 30 feet with concrete tilt up walls along with ancillary offices and a commissary for film crews to eat. They are used for film and television production along with commercials, social media, and product videos.
Los Angeles has 50% of the total square footage of production studios and soundstages in North America. Large clusters are in Hollywood, Burbank, and Downtown L.A. In 2023, demand for studio space to create content outpaces supply and availability.
IOS – Industrial Outdoor Storage
Industrial Outdoor Storage example: truck trailer land site
Industrial Outdoor Storage (IOS) is a land site zoned for an industrial use where the tenant can store items outside, most commonly vehicles, construction equipment, building materials, or containers. Most IOS sites have a small building that is generally used as an office and to store tools / parts required for the tenants’ operations. Typical IOS sites range from 3-10 acres of land with a small warehouse building.
IOS also includes truck terminals, which are specialized, low-coverage industrial facilities designed for the maximum throughput of goods. Truck terminals are cross docked facilities where a long-skinny building resides near the center of the site. Goods are not stored in truck terminals but rather moved from one truck to another in the most efficient manner possible. Less-than-truckload (LTL) third-party logistics operators, which combine multiple customers’ freight on a single truck for at least the long-haul portion of the journey, are large users of truck terminals.
Another common IOS use is truck trailer parking, sales, and leasing. And also equipment rentals.
