Fujita Sells 200,000-SF Office Building

John Pagliassotti of Voit Commercial Brokerage's Anaheim Metro office says the building is 95% leased to two tenants, Federal Express and International Rectifier. It is part of what was once a four-million-sf portfolio of industrial, office and hotel properties that Fujita owned throughout the US, primarily in California. Pagliassotti, along with Louis Tomaselli and Mitch Zehner of Voit Commercial's Anaheim Metro office, represented Fujita and RREEF in the transaction.

Fujita is a large and diverse general contracting firm that builds for private and public sectors, constructing office projects, retail developments, residential projects as well as public works construction projects. Like other Japanese firms that once owned large portfolios of US properties, Fujita has been selling off its American holdings in recent years. The 200,000-sf El Segundo property was its last major holding here.

New owner RREEF America is a commercial real estate investment adviser. Its new FedEx and International Rectifier building is a three-story, steel frame and glass facility that was constructed in 1986. It had been owned by Fujita since the late 1980s.

The building is part of an El Segundo office market that has softened considerably along with the rest of the region's submarkets in comparison to vacancies of below 10% in the late 1990s and early 2000. El Segundo is part of an overall South Bay market where direct vacancy is about 17% and overall vacancy is about 19%, according to brokerage reports. But, the vacancies vary considerably from submarket to submarket and even block to block within the submarkets. Brokers say that while some buildings--like the one Fujita sold--maintain occupancies in the high 90% range, others in El Segundo sit with large blocks of empty space.