Napa industrial park sells for $30 million

Also, fully leased Napa warehouse sold for $5.58 million

[caption id="attachment_29368" align="alignright" width="360" caption="Recent sales of Napa Airport Centre and 770 Airpark Road in south Napa show high demand for fully leased commercial real estate. (Cushman & Wakefield photos)"][/caption]

NAPA -- Westcore Properties LLC of San Diego acquired its second largest North Bay commercial property with the $30 million purchase of a 257,000-square-foot south Napa industrial complex containing Foster's Group subsidiary Treasury Wine Estates and the headquarters of Francis Ford Coppola's wine, hospitality and other pursuits.

The sale of Napa Airport Centre is one of three relatively large commercial property deals in Napa and Santa Rosa in the past two months.

Heavily backed in the all-cash deal by New York-based hedge fund Angelo, Gordon & Co., Westcore-AG Napa LP acquired eight-building Napa Airport Centre from Profili Family Partnership LP, Profili Airpark LLC and M&S&A Family LP on Jan. 10.

The 17-acre property provides Westcore with a "stable, high-performing asset," according Neil Johnson, principal and director of Northern California acquisitions.

The buildings, located at the corner of Airpark Road and Airport Boulevard in the Napa County Airport industrial area, are 98 percent leased to 10 tenants. Treasury occupies four, and Coppola Companies, one. Also in the complex is one of Mr. Coppola's bistros, called Mammarella's Cafe.

"Those properties are by far outperforming the marketplace," said Glen Dowling. He leads a San Rafael-based Cushman & Wakefield team that brokered the sale as well as lease renewals for the Profilis with tenants a couple months before the sale.

A significant factor in the high level of occupancy, at a time when other office complexes in the area are half- to three-quarters full, and sale activity is Ron Profili, according to Mr. Dowling.

More than 100 investors inquired about the property and Westcore's offer was one of multiple.

Napa Valley residents Ron and Betty Profili together with Mike Sherman of Los Angeles in 2004 purchased the 30 percent vacant Napa Airport Centre from Panattoni Development and Basin Street Properties.

Mr. Profili said he prefers to handle property management personally and up to that time had commercial properties in Orange and Sacramento counties. Over time, the ownership spent $1.1 million in upgrades to landscaping, roofs, signage and parking lots.

"I wanted to own Napa property," he said.

In late 2008 the Profilis via Sonoma Airport Properties LLC acquired three industrial buildings totaling 269,000 square feet near Sonoma County Airport north of Santa Rosa for $30.5 million from investment groups led by Panattoni founder Carl Panattoni.

Two of those three buildings are fully leased. TriVascular and Filtration Group each occupy a full building. The remaining 60,000-square-foot building, formerly occupied by Avery Weigh-Tronix, has three tenants in final negotiations to lease up the space, according to Mr. Profili.

The Profili portfolio now totals about 443,000 square feet.

"We decided to lighten up our portfolio," said Ron Profili.

Westcore's portfolio now totals 11.6 million square feet of industrial and office real estate. That includes Mariner's Landing, 135,000 square feet of office, industrial and retail space in 11 north Sausalito buildings. Westcore purchased it in February 2008 for $26 million.

Last year, Westcore acquired 10 office and industrial properties, including the Napa Airport Centre purchase, according to the company. That deal was supposed to close by year end. Acquisition volume in 2010 totaled $284.5 million, four times more than the year before, Westcore said.

Another south Napa commercial property that sold around the end of the year was 770 Skyway Court just east of Napa Airport Centre. Panattoni Development and Jim Carlsen Investments sold the 101,200-square-foot wine warehouse to Lowenberg Corp. in mid-December for $5.58 million, or $74.85 a square foot, according to Mr. Dowling, whose team also brokered the sale.

Lowenberg is a San Francisco-based investment group led by Bill Lowenberg and his daughter Susan. They now own six industrial buildings in the Napa area, according to Mr. Dowling.

Zephyr Express expanded to 770 Skyway in the first half of last year under a three-year lease of the whole building. Biagi Transportation & Warehousing had vacated the building less than two months before.

"Napa has always done better than other marketplaces with its barriers to entry -- it's not easy to build -- and captive audience with wine-related businesses," Mr. Dowling said. "That building was in the strike zone for Napa -- high-cube casegoods storage."

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