$20M Lease Takes 600,000 SF

CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA-Four Seasons General Merchandise has signed a long-term $20-million lease for 613,375 sf of distribution space in Gateway Pointe Industrial Park that is one of the largest industrial leases in Los Angeles County this year. The property is in unincorporated Los Angeles County adjacent to the western end of this city.Four Seasons is one of the largest brand name and licensed product distributors and importers of general merchandise in the US. Its new space is a newly built industrial building at 3777 Workman Mill Rd. that is the largest of three buildings in the recently completed, 950,000-sf first phase of Gateway Pointe Industrial Park.Bruce Gabbai, CEO of Four Seasons, says the company will consolidate four of its existing warehouses into the new building, which will be closer to the Port of Los Angeles than the older warehouses. Gabbai says the new space “will allow us to improve our efficiency greatly.” The company will continue to maintain its main office and showroom facilities in Vernon.Demand is strong for buildings like the newly leased Four Seasons facility because large new distribution buildings like it are rare in Los Angeles County, points out Cushman & Wakefield’s John McMillan. McMillan, along with Dave Hess of Trammell Crow, represented Four Seasons in the lease. McMillan says that since the vast majority of Los Angeles County’s nearly one billion sf of industrial space is composed of buildings between 10,000 sf and 100,000 sf, companies with big requirements usually must look to the Inland Empire and beyond. However, companies wanting their products closer to the people and the ports need to be in the Los Angeles Basin, especially given the growing traffic problems, drayage issues, and increasing fuel costs associated with warehousing the product 30 miles to 40 miles farther East in the Inland Empire, McMillan says.The Gateway Pointe center is owned and is being developed by Los Angeles-based Southwest Carpenters Pension Trust, with the Cushman & Wakefield brokerage team of McMillan, Stuart Milligan and David Hasbrouck as listing agents for the project. The remainder of the first phase consists of buildings of 260,911 sf and 77,195 sf. At build-out, Gateway Pointe Industrial Park will feature five buildings totaling more than 1.6 million sf on 70-acres near the interchange of the 60 and 605 freeways.