FONTANA, CA-Sares-Regis Group of Irvine has acquired two warehouses totaling 2.2 million sf in two buildings on 92 acres in Sierra Business Park and has sold one of them to a tire manufacturer. The Irvine-based company bought the two properties in the 200-acre Sierra Business Park from LNR, which developed the distribution buildings.

The building that Sares-Regis sold totals 1.1 million sf. The buyer was Tireco Inc., a Torrance-based tire manufacturer and importer. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

In addition to buying the two buildings and selling one of them, Sares-Regis has also negotiated a five-year lease under which American Sporting Goods of Irvine will occupy a 320,000-sf warehouse and distribution building that Sares-Regis owns in the Sierra Business Park. The total consideration of the lease is $7.7 million.

The multiple transactions leave Sares-Regis Group with three buildings available for lease, according Larry Lukanish, a VP with the Irvine-based company's commercial investment division. The remaining three include are one of the two 1.1-million-sf buildings that the company bought from LNR, a 167,000-sf building and a 116,000-sf building.

Sares-Regis began development in 2003 at the Sierra Business Park, which consists of seven buildings totaling 3.8 million sf. Rreef is the company's financial partner in the Sierra Business Park.

Lukanish notes that industrial vacancy rates remain in the low-single-digit range despite the years of development of huge warehouses and distribution centers in the Inland Empire. He calls the low vacancy "testimony to the intense demand for quality warehouse and distribution facilities in the region."

Sares-Regis was represented in the recent deals by Mike Wolfe and Joe McKay of the Ontario office of Lee & Associates, with McKay also representing LNR. American Sporting Goods was represented by Scott Read in the Irvine office of Grubb & Ellis, while Tireco represented itself.