Kearny JV Closes Deals on More Than 1M SF

[IMGCAP(1)]HAWTHORNE, CA-A partnership of Kearny Real Estate Co. of Los Angeles and Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund V has signed Vought Aircraft to a 1.4-million-square-foot lease extension and has sold two industrial buildings totaling 20,000 square feet at the JV’s Century Business Center here. Dallas-based Vought signed a five-year extension for its space, which is part of a 2.6-million-square-foot facility formerly owned by Vought that the Kearny-Morgan Stanley JV bought from the Dallas-based company in 2005 to develop the Century Business Center.

Vought then leased back 1.4 million square feet of the space from the Kearny-Morgan Stanley partnership, which is called Kearny Northrop Avenue LLC. Kearny Northrop Avenue repositioned the property and marketed the remaining 15 buildings to a variety of users; it razed approximately 350,000 square feet of obsolete buildings and aircraft hangars to make way 203,000 square feet of new industrial development.

[IMGCAP(2)]The two industrial buildings that Kearny Northrop Avenue sold at the Century Business Center are both newly completed structures. The buyers were Servicon Systems Inc. and Aqua Pro.

Servicon is one of the nation’s largest facilities maintenancecontractors serving the aerospace, industrial and high technology industries. It bought a 13,150-square-foot building for $2.7 million. Aqua Pro acquired a 7,729-square-foot building for $1.5 million.

Kearny Northrop Avenue was represented in both sales by Jeff Kernochan and Patrick O’Loughlin of Fischer Corporate Real Estate Services, who also represented Aqua Pro in its acquisition. Servicon was represented by Tibor Lody and Aleks Trifunovic of the Klabin Co.

Kearny Real Estate Co. partner Hoonie Kang notes that Vought now employs more than 600 workers with plans for an additional 400. Another company at the Century Business Center, Space Exploration Technologies, is expecting to add hundreds of new jobs after recently winning a $3 billion contract to build the rockets that will replace the Space Shuttle when it retires in 2010.