Category Archives: Deal File

Noteworthy completed sale or lease transactions.

Deal File

Rail Car MFG Building Anchors CleanTech Manufacturing Center

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cleantechAnsaldoBreda is planning to set-up operations in Los Angeles to anchor CRA/LA’s CleanTech Manufacturing Center (CTMC). AnsaldoBreda will bring a new, sustainable facility and nearly 1000 middle-class jobs, as a result of METRO exercising its option to purchase light rail cars from AnsaldoBreda.

The CleanTech Corridor is a four-mile long district on the eastern edge of Downtown Los Angeles that stretches from the Los Angeles State Historic Park (formerly the ‘Cornfields’) at the northern end to the CTMC at the South, including both the east and west banks of the Los Angeles River. The CTMC is located at the intersection of 15th Street and Santa Fe Avenue in the downtown industrial core at the northern terminus of the Alameda Corridor Improvement Project and within the Central Industrial Redevelopment Project Area.

The project will consist of a 240,000 square-foot light rail car manufacturing facility on 14 acres of the CRA/LA-owned, 20-acre CTMC site.  The CTMC is a former Brownsfields Revitalization site purchased by CRA/LA from State of California in 2008 for $14 million with the goal of attracting job rich clean tech businesses to Los Angeles.

Deal File

American Apparel To Continue Operations in Downtown L.A.

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Clothing Maker Inks 10-Year Deal With Landlord Meruelo Maddux

The Downtown-based garment maker American Apparel has reached a 10-year agreement with landlord Meruelo Maddux Properties to stay in its 800,000-square-foot, Warehouse District headquarters, according to American Apparel financial filings.

Although American Apparel’s lease expired in December 2008, it has continued to occupy the pink factory building at Seventh and Alameda streets. The extension comes more than fourth months after Meruelo Maddux, Downtown’s largest landlord, entered bankruptcy.

Prior to reaching the deal, American Apparel, which employs about 5,000 workers at the 747 Warehouse St. factory, was mulling a move. The company considered an old Boeing plant in Long Beach, among other potential new homes, said their real estate broker.

“There were other considerations, other buildings to look at, but Meruelo stepped up,” he said.

American Apparel represents Mereulo Maddux’s largest tenant, both in terms of the size of its space and the value of its former lease.

Terms of the new lease were not disclosed.

American Apparel CEO Dov Charney said the lease was agreed to this month, but declined to comment further on the deal. Richard Meruelo, CEO of Meruelo Maddux, could not be reached immediately Tuesday afternoon.

In addition to housing almost all business operations, the factory has also served as a massive billboard for the company to promote itself and its progressive, often immigration-oriented political messages. American Apparel can also now safely cling to its various mottos touting its “Made in Downtown L.A.” cache.

The building’s sprawling parking lot is also known as the site of festive blowout warehouse sales that draw thousands of young buyers looking for discounted t-shirts, leggings, short shirts and underwear.   by Ryan Vaillancourt, Staff Writer, Downtown News.

Deal File

Forever 21 Purchases Two Large Buildings

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Forever 21, the large garment manufacturer of young women’s clothing, has acquired two large buildings in the past year.  The first building is the 370,000 square foot Overland Terminal facility at the intersection of Alameda St and Olympic Blvd in Downtown Los Angeles with a price of $20 M.  This multistory building has parking and dock high loading.  The second purchase was in the City of Vernon on Sierra Pine Ave.  This collection of several Class B buildings totals near 130,000 square feet.  Forever 21 was the tenant in the buildings and the sale price was approximately $6.5 M.

The company is based in Downtown Los Angeles and occupies several hundred thousand square feet of buildings at Alameda St and 20th St.

Deal File, Food Industry

Real Mex Food Expands Food Processing Plant

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Real Mex Foods expanded food processing plant in Vernon, CaliforniaReal Mex Foods supplies more than 200 restaurants as the distribution branch of Real Mex Restaurants, Cypress, Calif., including Chevy’s, El Torito and Acapulco restaurant concepts located in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.  In addition, Real Mex Foods has branched into broader frozen foods processing for foodservice, co-pack and retail channels serving clients such as Sysco Distributors, El Pollo Loco, Carl’s Jr.-Green Burrito, Albertson’s and U.S. Foods.

In February, Real Mex closed its 32,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., and moved into a 100,000-square-foot space in Vernon, California. The city of Vernon and a developer came to us and proposed a deal where we got a 100,000-square-foot building retrofitted to a state-of-the-art USDA manufacturing plant, Angulo explains.  It was an opportunistic deal.   They got us into 100,000 square feet at the cost that we would have gotten a build-to-suit 65,000-square-foot building.

Food safety also was a major priority for Real Mex in building out the new plant. The company built an in-house lab and hired a complete quality assurance team. Other food safety precautions include a triple boiler system, floor foamers, centralized sanitation system, in-house chlorination system for vegetables and a full quality assurance staff.

The developer invested $10 million in the build out, while Real Mex spent about $4 million on equipment. The completely refurbished plant quadrupled the company’s previous capacity and allowed it to more than double the number of kettles, tumble chillers and blast freezers. www.realmexfoods.com

Deal File, Propound

23 Acre Industrial Site Sold

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The Los Angeles Unified School District has agreed to pay $50 million to settle an eminent domain dispute with Meruelo Maddux Properties over 23 acres of land in Cypress Park which is located north of Downtown Los Angeles.  The site is commonly referred to as Taylor Yard.  Meruelo Maddux originally purchased the site for $31.8 million, snatching it from the claws of the LAUSD.

Here is another example of the misdirected LAUSD board removing more industrial zoned land from the city.  They should take residential properties for schools not industrial as industrial properties create the sorely needed jobs for L.A. denizens, especially the lower classes that live in Cypress Park.