Industrial Parks

California Industrial Properties of Irvine has acquired four industrial parks in Orange and Los Angeles counties for an estimated $22 million. The industrial parks have 438,000 square feet of space on 24 acres. The company bought Lambert Palm Business Center in La Habra and Founders Business Center in Yorba Linda from Founders Financial Corp.; Park La Habra in La Habra from Principal Group; and Bloomfield Center in Santa Fe Springs from an unidentified seller.

SEOUL -- A top North Korean official said Monday his nation will suspend the work of its more than 50,000 employees at a joint industrial park that had been one of the proudest examples of cooperation between North and South Korea. Kim Yang-gon, secretary of Workers' Party central committee, visited the Kaesong complex just north of the demilitarized zone between the two countries early Monday and later issued a statement that the North would "examine the issue of whether it will allow its existence or close it. " After weeks of heightened tension in the Korean peninsula, the North last week banned the entry of South Korean workers and raw materials for the industrial zone.

Newbury Partners LLC of Thousand Oaks has purchased a 39,000-square-foot industrial park in Newbury Park for $2.3 million. The property at 3475 Old Conejo Road underwent extensive renovation in 1997 and is 98% occupied, officials said. "This is one of the few multi-tenant industrial parks sold in the region during 1998," said Tony Principe of Wescord Commercial Real Estate Services, which represented the buyers.

SEOUL -- After days of harsh threats against the United States and  South Korea, North Korea on Wednesday morning banned South Koreans' entry to the Kaesong industrial complex that is operated jointly by the North and South in a region just above the  demilitarized zone. The action came a day after Pyongyang announced that it would restart a reactor that was closed in 2007 and increase production of nuclear weapons material. The South Korean Unification Ministry said the North was allowing workers already at the Kaesong industrial park to cross the border to return to the South.

Pacific Gulf Properties Inc. said Wednesday that it is using the last of its proceeds from a recent stock offering to acquire a San Bernardino industrial project for $6.375 million. The Newport Beach real estate investment trust bought the Riverview Industrial Park, which consists of 297,346 square feet of industrial and warehouse space. Pacific Gulf owns and operates multifamily and industrial properties in California and the Pacific Northwest.

The owners of one of the South Bay's largest industrial parks--the Port Los Angeles Distribution Center--have sold the property for an estimated $130 million, according to people familiar with the deal. A pension fund advisory firm identified as State Street Resources purchased the nearly 2-million-square-foot complex in San Pedro on behalf of one of its clients.

Pension fund advisor RREEF Funds has purchased northern Orange County's 1.25-million-square-foot Fullerton Crossroads industrial park from Legacy Partners Commercial for nearly $67 million. The Chicago-based firm's acquisition of the former Hunt-Wesson tomato-canning facility shows that institutional investors remain active buyers of well-located Southern California income properties despite softening tenant demand.

A plan to transform a defunct gravel pit into a multimillion-dollar industrial park may be scrapped because of project design changes the City Council has required. Proposed in 1989 by CalMat Co., the project calls for the partial refilling of a 130-acre pit and construction of a business complex on the property. The pit sits directly across from City Hall on Irwindale Avenue and has not been mined by CalMat since 1972. Initial city reaction to the plan was favorable.

Azusa Industrial Center, a 38-acre development at the former site of Miller Brewing Co., is under construction. A joint venture between Messenger Investment Co. of Irvine and IVO Inc., a subsidiary of Mission Viejo Realty Group Inc., Azusa Industrial Center is located near the intersection of 8th and Vernon streets. Oltmans Construction Co. of Monterey Park is the project's general contractor. Coldwell Banker Commercial Real Estate Services is the project's marketing agent.

Black & Decker, Maryland-based manufacturer of consumer building tools and small appliances, has leased 205,000 square feet in a 258,000-square-foot building at 11671 Dayton Drive in the Rancho Cucamonga Distribution Center for five years at an aggregate rental of about $3.4 million. The 150-acre industrial park, a development of O'Donnell, Brigham & Partners of Costa Mesa, is bounded by 6th and 8th streets and Pittsburgh and Milliken avenues, Rancho Cucamonga.

RAHAT, Israel - On a patch of agricultural land outside Israel's only officially recognized Bedouin city, workers are laying concrete for what the government says will be a cornerstone of its policy to lure impoverished Arabs from barren Negev desert terrain to approved Israeli towns. Upon completion, Idan Hanegev is designed to be Israel's largest industrial park, an 860-acre site with 130 factories employing thousands of Bedouins, a once-nomadic people who have lived in the Negev and other parts of the region since long before the nation of Israel was established.

William T. "Bill" Huston, former chairman of one of Southern California's oldest and largest real estate companies, died Wednesday at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. He was 83. Huston, who headed Watson Land Co. for 40 years, was one of the builders who transformed Los Angeles from a largely pastoral region into a metropolis in the decades after World War II. When Huston took over the Carson-based company in 1963, its primary asset was about 1,200 acres in the South Bay that dated to a Spanish land grant.

Call it a case of dueling consulates. Almost every morning, crowds of visa-seekers flock to the sprawling Iranian diplomatic mission here, a prime center of gravity in this western Afghan city with deep Persian roots. Now, a new U.S. Consulate is poised to open as well, staking out a commanding hillside position in a landmark building that was once a luxury hotel. Diplomats being diplomats, neither the U.S. nor the Iranian side acknowledges any rivalry, or any wish to keep tabs on the other's activities.

It's a vacant lot now, but Los Angeles officials hope to turn the former brownfield site downtown into a cluster of "green" manufacturing businesses to meet the region's growing demand for solar and wind power and other clean technologies. The proposed CleanTech Manufacturing Center would be established on a city-owned 20-acre parcel in an industrial area near the intersection of 15th Street and Santa Fe Avenue, south of the 10 Freeway and west of the Los Angeles River.

1974 * This picture by Lewis Baltz is just one example of the hidden treasures in the Photography Department collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Baltz is a seminal figure in the recent history of photography, not just in California but in general. He was one of several photographers working in the West who were included in a 1975 exhibition titled "New Topographics." This term stuck because the icy objectivity it suggested was the essential quality that the photographs shared.

Beverly Wells is a 74-year-old faithful Miller beer drinker, and until recently, the closest she had come to brewing was making homemade coffee liqueur. But on a recent afternoon, at a small brewery inside a Huntington Beach industrial park at Heil Avenue and Gothard Street, Wells was carefully weighing grains and stirring malts and honey into a copper brewing kettle.

Los Angeles County officials are proposing to establish a headquarters for a new Antelope Valley public bus system in a Lancaster industrial park developed in part by Bill Pursley, a controversial Lancaster councilman. Under the plan, a lot owned by the councilman's nephew in the Antelope Valley Industrial Park is the county's top choice to lease--potentially for three years--for a bus yard. A nearby site owned by Pursley could be considered as an alternative, county officials said.

Like many new churches, Canyon Family Worship Center is long on good intentions but short on cash. Pastor Gary Martin started the church five years ago, holding services in a hotel conference room every Sunday. When the congregation outgrew that arrangement, Martin began looking for a building to buy or lease. "I must have looked at every building in a five-mile radius," he said.

To see how Mexico's garment industry is stumbling against global competition, look no further than Textile City. This modern industrial park about 65 miles east of the capital was the nation's response to the growing challenge from Asia. The park's founders planned a specialized factory town similar to those in China, where manufacturers would cluster together.

In the latest court ruling that forces developers to prove a reliable water supply, a state appeals panel in Los Angeles has blocked construction of a large industrial park in Santa Clarita after finding the project relied on imported "paper water" that may not be delivered. A three-justice panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled this week that Santa Clarita and the developer of a 4.