"The North San Diego County market is a particularly hard [place] to find sites because there's a lot of geographic challenges with lots of hills and canyons, we'd been looking for some time, but it's just hard to find buildable sites for commercial – and especially office and industrial – properties," he says. "So this was a very unique opportunity because San Diego is a good city and it had all the constraints institutional investors want."

By constraints, McCormick means that Oceanside is well buffered by the existing elements: the Mexican border to the south, the ocean to the west, the mountains to the east and the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton to the north. "With these kinds of barriers there's no easy access into this market," McCormick notes. "So investors already in there don't have to worry about too much surrounding competition."

Another reason investors like San Diego and projects like Seagate, according to McCormick, is because this county has such a diverse employment base, including everything from golf attire manufacturers, to the world's leading biotechnology companies, to computer software.

The commercial owner, developer and management group also just purchased a 23-acre vacant site in Torrance this past August, which, combined with Seagate, is helping to beef up its California commercial real estate portfolio.