CITY OF INDUSTRY—AEW Capital Management has sold nearly five acres of industrial land in the City of Industry to Great Dragon LLC, a shoe distributor. According to Cushman & Wakefield senior director Erik Larson, who represented the seller in the transaction, the sale shows the increasing demand for industrial land in this submarket, where industrial land values have risen by 50% in the past 12 months.

“Over the last year or 18 months, there has been so much pent up demand for new construction that land sites have just been gobbled up,” Larson tells GlobeSt.com. “You have a lot of Asian import companies located in the San Gabriel Valley, and they often prefer new construction, but in order to get new construction, you need land to build. So, it seems like whenever a new site comes on the market, it is the next highest comp.”

The buyer plans to develop a 90,000-square-foot industrial facility on the site, which is zoned M1 for light industrial use. The property traded hands for $30.5 per square foot, a total price of $6.5 million. Initially, the sales team expected to recieve offers in the high $20 range, but they ended up receiving offers above the $30.50 sales price. “We did a controlled bid on this deal, approached all of the appropriate developers and put a timeline on having offers due. We received offers north of $30 per square foot from both users and developers, and we elected to go with the user because they owned the caddy-corner property. We just felt like it was the cleaner deal,” says Larson, who represented the seller along with his Cushman & Wakefield colleagues John Minervini, executive director, Robin Dodson, senior director, and Chris Tolles, associate director.