Shirt Maker Buys Montgomery Ward Property

Morning Sun, a manufacturer of T-shirts, bought the property for $3.7 million from 12300 Monarch LLC, which had owned it for about a year.

The single-story building is at 12300 Monarch St. in Garden Grove. The shirt manufacturing company acquired the property to consolidate and expand its operations, which were previously located in three separate buildings in Santa Ana, according to Mike Bouma of Voit Commercial Brokerage. Bouma and Alan Pekarcik represented the seller, while Andy Friedman of Industrial Brokers represented the buyer.

The building served as a service center for Montgomery Ward before the retailer filed for bankruptcy and liquidated. The seller renovated the building after acquiring it, and had recently offered it for sale. Bouma says Morning Sun Shirt Co. formerly leased space at its other locations, but the company chose the route that many others have taken lately, buying a building to take advantage of low interest rates and readily available financing.

The seller's conversion of the building for another use is one of a number of renovations and redevelopments of properties formerly occupied by Montgomery Ward before the retailer and catalog house went bankrupt.

Among others was a former Ward store in Mission Viejo that was transformed as part of the repositioning of The Shops At Mission Viejo, a shopping center first built in the 1970s and has been remodeled in recent years.