Mitch Kralis, a principal at Red Sea, tells GlobeSt.com that the building at 5200 S. Alameda St. is the fourth-largest bakery operated by Sara Lee, which has more than 10 years remaining on its lease for the facility. The Mani Bros. built the property in 1988.

The bakery building purchase departs a bit from the type of value-added and entrepreneurial transactions Red Sea is best known for, Kralis notes. "We've been buying core assets like investment-grade, single-tenant office or industrial facilities with 10 years or longer on the term," he says. "Historically, we've been more of an entrepreneur, but given where the markets are globally, and given where the interest rates are, we are taking advantage of the financing that is available to secure some good cash-flow opportunities."

 Kralis confides that Red Sea is proceeding on a couple of other transactions in the Greater LA area, where the firm is about a third of the way to its goal of acquiring $350 million to $400 million of Southern California assets by the end of 2004. Among the investment group's other California holdings is a former Northrop Grumman Corp. facility in Torrance that Red Sea acquired for approximately $43 million last year, and then leased to AT&T Corp. In another deal last year, Red Sea acquired the 101,000-sf North American headquarters of Germany's Wella AG Corp. and its Sebastian International subsidiary at DeSoto Avenue and Erwin Street in Woodland Hills for approximately $20 million.