Bankruptcy Visit Produces 156,000-SF Tenant

The new tenant is IHOI Inc., which will use the property to produce its instant noodles and soup bases. Schloemer partnered with James Min, director of Korean marketing in Colliers International's Torrance, CA office to represent IHOI and the building owner, L & C USA, an affiliate of Hanwha, one of the largest publicly traded companies in South Korea.

Schloemer tells GlobeSt.com that he visited the bankruptcy auction to see who would be buying the manufacturing equipment at 14524 Myford Rd. The former tenant of the building, also a noodle maker, had gone bankrupt and Schloemer figured that whoever bought the noodle-manufacturing equipment in the building might also be in the market for a building to house the equipment.

When the owner of IHOI began buying the equipment, Schloemer says, "We approached him and said, 'Since you're buying everything in the building, why don't you just leave it here and lease the building from us?'" The IHOI owner agreed, and "We had a handshake deal by the end of the day and a document within a couple of weeks." The lease was signed within a month.

Besides the way in which Schloemer found his tenant, the deal was unusual in a number of other respects. For one, the 155,805 square-foot building was already set up for noodle manufacturing because it was a build-to-suit for the former tenant and was designed for that purpose. For another, the type of manufacturing is rare in Irvine, where manufacturers are more likely to be high-tech or biotech companies.

The 14524 Myford Rd. building comprises about 60,000 square feet of warehouse space and the balance manufacturing space. The building is situated on a site of about 8.5 acres.

Schloemer points out that in addition to providing a ready-made facility for the new tenant, the deal allowed the landlord to rent the space without having to spend a lot on tenant improvements or to reconfigure the building for a different type of tenant. Terms of the lease were undisclosed.