$12M Lands 116,575-SF Flex Site

SANTA ANA, CA-Barclay and Co. of San Mateo has paid $12 million for a 116,575-sf R&D building in Santa Ana to the French Co., a privately held investment firm based in Newport Beach, according to Voit Commercial Brokerage.

Jeff Mitchell of Voit Commercial Brokerage’s Irvine office, who represented the seller says the building at 2700-2722 S. Fairview St. is in the Orange County Airport Area submarket, one of the most desirables location for manufacturing and technology firms.

The building is 100% leased to Optimal Robotics Corp. of Quebec, Canada, and Cal Quality Electronics of Santa Ana, which has its headquarters in the structure. Optimal Robotics, a supplier of self-checkout machines for the retail industry, occupies 66,302 sf at the 2722 address. The company’s automated self-checkout systems, used by US retailers including Kroger Co. and Wal-Mart, enable shoppers to scan, bag and pay for their purchases with little or no help from store employees.

Cal Quality Electronics, an electronic subassembly manufacturing company that was established in 1981, occupies the other 50,273 sf at 2700 Fairview St., where it serves customers ranging from start-ups to global corporations.

In addition to Mitchell, Louis Tomaselli and Mitch Zehner of Voit Commercial Brokerage’s Anaheim Metro office represented the French Co. Buyer Barclay and Co. used an in-house broker for its bargaining.

The Fairview Street building is part of an Airport Area industrial submarket that was one of the best performing industrial corridors in Orange County during the first quarter, according to statistics from Voit, which measures the market at 2,511 buildings with close to 83.6 million sf. The availability rate in the submarket dipped to slightly more than 9.4% in the first quarter, a decrease from about 10.5% in the previous quarter. Santa Ana, one of six cities that comprise the Airport Area submarket, has 32.4 million sf of industrial space and a lower vacancy, 6.6%, than its counterparts, according to Voit.