Cornerstone Buys Office Project for $49M

DIAMOND BAR, CA-Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers of Hartford has acquired the two-building, 162,326-sf Gateway Center office project from New York City-based Falcon Real Estate for $48.5 million, according to Cushman & Wakefield. The property features twin office buildings at 21680 and 21688 Gateway Center Dr. in a Diamond Bar office submarket that is one of the tightest in Southern California, according to Cushman & Wakefield brokers Jeffrey Cole and Ron Heim from the firm’s Orange County and Inland Empire offices, who represented the seller.

Built in 2000, the Gateway Corporate Center’s two class A buildings, three stories each, represent one of the top office developments in the submarket and were 99% leased at the time of the sale. The tenant roster includes Travelers Insurance and Wells Fargo, among others.

The Gateway Center location, at the intersection of the 57 and 60 freeways in the Gateway Corporate Center business park, is part of a master-planned corporate campus. Cole, who is an executive director with Cushman & Wakefield’s Southern California Capital Markets Group, calls it “the top office asset in the Diamond Bar submarket, which has one of the lowest vacancy rates of any submarket of Los Angeles County.”

Cole cites a vacancy rate of 1.4% in the City of Industry/Diamond Bar submarket as of the fourth quarter of 2007, adding that tenant demand remains strong and rental rates continue to increase. A recent market report by Cushman & Wakefield lists the City of Industry/Diamond Bar submarket total inventory at nearly 2.4 million sf in 35 buildings, part of a 9.5-million-sf, 127-building San Gabriel Valley office market where vacancy and total availability rates remain in the low single digits.