Clarion Partners, EBS Realty Partners Buy 19-Acre Colton Industrial Site After Moratorium Ends

Clarion Partners and EBS Realty Partners have closed on a 19-acre industrial site in Colton that is already approved for a 412K SF warehouse. The duo paid $61M for the site. 

Colton, like a handful of other Inland Empire cities, had a moratorium on new warehouse properties, but it expired in May, LA Business First reported. 

“This project provided the buyer with an incredible opportunity to acquire one of the very few assets that is outside of the warehouse development moratorium in the Inland Empire,” CBRE Vice Chair and Managing Director Darla Longo said in a statement. “Our team fielded many competitive offers, given the truly irreplaceable distribution location of this property.”

Longo, along with CBRE's Barbara Perrier and Eric Cox, represented the seller, Newport Beach-based real estate investment firm Hager Pacific Properties.

A new warehouse could be completed at the site as soon as the third quarter of next year, a release from CBRE says.

Moratoriums of various lengths have cropped up throughout the Inland Empire in response to residents' pushback against what they say are the negative cumulative effects of being one of the top industrial markets in the nation — namely, air pollution.

Although land has continued to trade hands and projects have continued to be built, many industrial owners and developers say they have felt the crunch of the limitations of where they can build and operate. 

"Supply is becoming extremely difficult to bring online in places like California," Prologis Chief Financial Officer Tim Arndt said on the company's second-quarter earnings call this week. "In fact, I'm kind of worried about it because some of these places are shutting down."