Arden Adds $32M Building to Portfolio

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CA-Arden Realty Inc. has acquired a 138,000-sf office building at 30700 Russell Ranch Rd. for $32.3 million in an off-market purchase in one of two significant transactions completed recently by the Los Angeles-based office REIT. In the other, the REIT renewed Boeing Corp. for 272,000 sf of leases in Long Beach.The Westlake Village building is 100% occupied by Homestore in a lease that runs until January 2008. With this acquisition, Arden now owns four properties comprising more than 345,000 sf of class A office space in the 1.5-million-sf Westlake Village submarket of the West San Fernando Valley. The direct vacancy rate in the Westlake Village market stood at 7.3% as of June 30. Arden acquired the Russell Ranch Road building from a private group based in Los Angeles in a sale brokered by Kevin Shannon, Scott Schumacher, Tom Festa and Michael Moore of Grubb & Ellis. The two-story, concrete tilt-up structure was built in 1999.In the Long Beach transaction, Boeing Corp. renewed two leases valued at an aggregate of approximately $11.3 million for a total of 272,000 sf in three buildings at Arden’s Long Beach Airport project, according to Rick Davis, SVP and CFO at Arden. Davis tells GlobeSt.com that Boeing, which is the sole tenant in the 100% occupied airport project, uses approximately 122,000 sf of the space for administrative purposes and conducts research and development activities in the other 150,000 sf. Boeing’s space is on eight floors in three different buildings at 4900, 4910 and 4811 Airport Plaza Drive.

The previous Boeing leases were scheduled to expire in October 2005 and represented about 8% of Arden’s 2005 expirations, according to Robert Peddicord, Arden’s SVP of property operations. The new lease on the 122,000 sf of administrative space runs until 2010, with the new lease on the 150,000 sf of development space running until 2012. Arden has owned the airport project since 1998.