LOS ANGELES- “Of the three [tri-cities] markets, Pasadena is the strongest right now,” according to market expert Patrick Church, who joined Jones Lang LaSalle last week as managing director along with his tri-cities partner Anneke Greco, who came on board as VP, GlobeSt.com reported exclusively. The duo formerly worked at CBRE and controlled 4 million square feet of institutional business in the tri-cities market. With new development projects breaking ground later this year and investment activity picking up, Pasadena is leading the pack.

With vacancy rates at about 12%, Church believes the Pasadena market is returning to its glory days in 2007 when vacancy was at a low 2.5% with an 8.5-million-square-foot base. “It took a while to get back to where we are today. I think when you really dissect [the 12% vacancy rate] and take out some of the D- and C-quality product, the vacancy is really single digits, probably closer to 8%,” Church tells GlobeSt.com.

The decrease in vacancy has attracted investor attention, leading to several notable transactions that have either recently closed or that are pending. The joint acquisition of the Avery Dennison campus between Legacy Partners and Alliance Bernstein Real Estate Partners L.P. in May is the most notable; however, the pending sale of the AT&T Tower and an office building Wells Fargo is selling to Kennedy Wilson are also significant. “All of these buildings have had multiple offers and multiple rounds of negotiations, so the investment side of the business is very positive,” Church says, who also notes that Prudential's purchase of three assets from Equity Office Properties is evidence of a bump in investor attention. “Prudential is very strong on the market and feels that the market is going nowhere but up.”