Both leases involve AMB's Airport Business Park, a 33-acre project on the west side of Van Nuys Airport. Capstone Turbine Corp. agreed to take 78,711 sf at 16640 Stagg St., in a 10-year deal valued at $5.9 million.

Separately, online children's' clothing retailer Enson Inc. took 108,162 sf of administrative and distribution space in a neighboring building, in a five-year pact worth about $3.7 million.

The vacancy factor in the San Fernando Valley industrial market is a scant 3%, down from about 5% a year ago. "The Valley has more than 100 million sf of industrial space, but it's still hard to find anything available," Brad Koehler, the Trammell Crow broker and vice president who represented AMB in both transactions, tells GlobeSt.com. "There's a shortage of space and lots of demand."

Several factors are working in favor of Valley landlords, Koehler says. "The local economy is very strong, and there's just not much space to build new product," he says. "Most of the new development has to go to outlying areas, or the builder has to buy an older facility and then either rehab it or demolish it and start over."

San Francisco-based AMB Properties, which has been adding to its Southland portfolio of late, bought the Van Nuys parcel in March. It was formerly owned by The Marquardt Co., a defense contractor.

The two buildings that AMB just leased were fully rehabbed before they were put on the market, Koehler says. The other structures were razed to make way for new construction.

A Trammell Crow-AMB partnership has already started to build 489,000 sf of additional industrial space on the site, all of it speculative. "But we're already talking to some interested parties, and we project that at least half the space will be leased up by the time the project opens next March," Koehler adds.

In the Enson lease, the tenant was represented by the West LA office ofJulien J. Studley Inc. In the Capstone Turbine deal, Capstone was represented by the Encino office of Colliers Seeley.