Arden has tapped brokerage teams from CB Richard Ellis, Madison Partners, Jones Lang LaSalle and Secured Capital to market the assets, which are part of an Arden portfolio of 102 properties comprising of 241 buildings and approximately 16.5 million sf throughout the West Coast. GlobeSt.com has learned that the buildings that are on the market are all part of the portfolio that GE acquired when it bought Arden, which soon demonstrated that it would be both a buyer and a seller in its efforts to reshape its portfolio.

Last summer, for example, Arden sold a portfolio of office properties totaling 4.6 million sf to a unit of Mexico's Gisca for $1.5 billion, according to a GlobeSt.com report at the time. Soon after the company agreed to that deal, it bought a portfolio of 38 former CarrAmerica office properties totaling 106 buildings and 5.9 million sf from the Blackstone Group for approximately $2 billion.

The CarrAmerica transaction gave the company title to new assets in San Diego, Orange County, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, OR and Salt Lake City in an expansion beyond the Southern California market where Arden had owned virtually all of its space before the sale to GE. As Arden president and CEO Joaquin de Monet told GlobeSt.com at the time, the CarrAmerica deal boosted the company's portfolio to 2.2 million sf more space than Arden held before GE took over.

De Monet explained that the Arden strategy was designed to retain its commitment to the Southern California market but also to increase its holdings in new target markets throughout the West Coast, including Northern California, Seattle, Portland and Phoenix. The placing of the five million sf of Southern California assets on the market is a piece of that overall strategy, sources confirm.

Arden continues to look for acquisitions in Southern California as well as the other western markets, our source tells GlobeSt.com. that source says that the company believes that investor demand for properties in Southern California remains strong and should generate attractive offers for the buildings that it has placed on the market, but it is not under pressure to sell and will hold out for the right pricing.

Besides the approximately 16.5 million sf that it owns and manages throughout the West Coast, Arden manages an additional 4.6 million sf in Southern California. The company's business plan also includes an emphasis on energy efficiency throughout its portfolio.