San Francisco Business Times, 6/11/2010
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U-Haul unit pays $10M for factory site
Oakland’s former Sunshine Biscuit factory has a new owner.
Amerco Real Estate, the real estate arm of U-Haul, recently paid $10 million in cash for the 523,272-square-foot site at 851 81st Ave. to Fowler Property Acquisitions.
The buyer had been looking for a facility for several years, said Brian Collins, a broker with Cassidy Turley BT Commercial, who represented Amerco.
“There were multiple offers on the property,” he said. “In Oakland, this is probably one of the few large industrial properties that hit the market.”
The price of about $19 per square foot was an attractive discount, Collins said, and reflected Fowler’s urgency to sell.
Not only was the price hard to beat in the market, Collins said, but the building already had a mini-storage section, which Amerco wanted. Amerco had gone into escrow on a different property last year, but that deal fell apart.
“U-haul has no storage in Oakland or the East Bay,” said Carlos Viscarra of Amerco, based in Phoenix. “We’ve been looking, but locations are hard to find.”
The site, with 11 acres of land, is close to Interstate 880, noted Andrew Briner, a broker with Cushman & Wakefield who represented the seller along with John McManus, Grant Lammerson, George Eckard and Seth Siegel.
“The property presented the right opportunity for Amerco’s expansion plans,” Briner said. “We generated a lot of interest from the local market as well as from some investors from out of the area.”
Amerco plans to use about 206,700 square feet of the space for its storage and truck rental business. About 83,000 square feet of the building houses 42 live/work units. The remaining 230,000 square feet is set aside for leasing and has about 120,000 square feet available.
Sunshine Biscuits moved out of the building in 1993. After that, commercial property owner Jim Alexander took over the 1940s property and later sold to Fowler, which bought at the top of the market and then remodeled it.
The property has a long history of being a home for industry and jobs in East Oakland, said Margot Prado of Oakland’s economic development agency.
“Our desire,” she said, “is to see that building remain in an active industrial use.”
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