TA Realty Buys Two Inland Empire Warehouses for $134M

TA Realty has acquired two Inland Empire warehouses from JCS Properties for a total of $133.5M. Stream Realty represented the buyer in the transaction.

Boston-based TA paid $92M for a 254K warehouse in City of Industry that is fully leased to Classic Beverage Company, a distributor of domestic and imported beers.

The industrial facility, located at 120 Puente Avenue, includes refrigerated space in the warehouse and a third-story office that includes a training room, kitchen and bar.

TA Realty also acquired for $41.5M a 140K SF warehouse located at 451 Cota Street in Corona, at the intersection of Main Street and Riverside Freeway. The facility features 11 dock doors, three drive-in bays and 160 parking spaces. The two-tenant property is 42% occupied.

According to a release from Stream Realty, the West Inland Empire industrial market comprises more than 334 million rentable square feet of industrial space. The market experienced 6 million rentable square feet of positive gross absorption in the second quarter of 2022. Vacancy remains at an all-time low of 0.38 percent.

The Inland Empire has been the tightest industrial market in the US since the beginning of the year, essentially filled to capacity—vacancies were less than 0.4%, according to JLL’s Q2 market report.

Year-to-date net absorption in the Inland Empire was nearly 7.3M SF at the end of the second quarter. Pre-leased space was the primary driver of net absorption in Q2, as existing availabilities remain extremely limited.

The development pipeline jumped another 9.2 million SF in Q2 2022, to a record 39.2M SF, JLL reported. Asking rates increased another 13.7% quarter-over-quarter as vacancy remained at a record low

Last month, two more cities joined a growing list of Southern California municipalities that have said enough to the largest warehouse sprawl in North America, estimated at 2.3B SF.

By unanimous vote, the Norco city council enacted a 45-day moratorium on the construction of new industrial real estate projects involving warehouses. Their vote followed a decision by Pomona officials to extend their warehouse moratorium for another 10-and-a-half months.

These are just the latest in a growing NIMBY backlash among towns in the Inland Empire trying to stop the warehouse sprawl that has filled all but a handful of infill sites in the Western half of the two-county region—which encompasses the area between the LA city limits and the Arizona border—from spreading to the Eastern half and northward.