Lee & Associates' Home Run Month
Dave McCarty (a former pro baseball player we profiled back in April) and the 15 other brokers in Lee & Associates' Oakland office are on a winning streak this spring. Since May 1, the firm has done at least four sizable deals in East Bay. Last week Terreno Realty Corp, a notoriously quiet buyer in the Bay Area, closed on a 130k SF industrial site in San Leandro as an investment deal at 2054-2070 Burroughs Ave. Also in San Leandro, Lee & Associates repped buyer K.I.S. in the purchase of a 13k SF industrial building at 591 Montague St. Lee also repped landlord Cabot Properties in a 81k SF, 47-month industrial lease renewal with Celestica LLC at 40737 Encyclopedia Cir in Fremont.
Lee & Associates' managing principal Craig Hagglund (pictured with CEO Jeff Rinkov) hopes momentum continues on the sales and leasing sides. Craig just teamed up with Dave to rep Visual Supply Co (VSCO) for their new 24k SF HQ lease at 1500 Broadway in Oakland. The building, which was built in 1923, sits blocks from BART in the emerging Uptown neighborhood. VSCO co-founder and CEO Joel Flory wanted to stay in Oakland because it's got his favorite art galleries, museums, restaurants, and the A’s call Oakland home (FYI: Dave used to play for them). The new office will act as a multi-purpose workspace, with an art gallery (also if you work there they might consider putting your art on the refrigerator), multiple meeting areas, outdoor deck, and flexible workstations. This month the company closed on a $40M Series A round of financing.
Activity this spring has been brisk, Dave tells us, and Lee is seeing a lot more S.F. companies looking for space in the East Bay. He expects that to continue throughout the rest of the year as more deals get inked. East Bay sales have really picked up, he says, but the problem is there's not enough inventory. (They're scoopin' 'em up faster than they can be produced, it's like trying to feed a seal.) A 8,300 SF brick and timber building at 130 Webster in Jack London Square hit the market this spring for a whopping $300/SF, and he hears the deal is in escrow. In April Lee took an office condo out to market for $2.2M (pictured). The 7,300 SF unit at 283 4th sits in the old Allied Paper Building, and the ground-floor unit has great natural light and could go the retail or office route. The creative open concrete building, which boasts 18-foot ceilings, has had decent tour activity so far, Dave says.
