The industrial and office sectors of Ventura’s commercial real estate market continue to see action, even during a pandemic. A new industrial building in Simi Valley is already off the market.

Newmark Knight Frank announced the lease of a 211,715-square-foot building in Simi Valley at 1757 Tapo Canyon Road. The Class A industrial building sits on 10.69 acres and includes features like 135-foot truck courts, three ground-level loading doors and a fence around the property.

The team, which includes Executive Managing Director John DeGrinis and Senior Managing Directors Patrick DuRoss and Jeff Abraham, didn’t say how much the building is being leased for, or who leased it.

Before the property became an industrial facility, it was a former Bank of America facility. The office, which was 179,357 square feet in size, was opened in 1984 and renovated in 1995.

Newmark Knight Frank is also responsible for several other recent deals in the area, including a multiproperty office portfolio. The portfolio, which went for $55 million, included four buildings: a two-building, 195,906-square-foot project at 2801 and 2815 Townsgate Road, and a two-building, 69,707-square-foot campus at 100 and 200 N. Westlake Blvd.

NKF Executive Managing Director Sean Fulp worked with a team, including Co-Head of Capital Markets Kevin Shannon, Executive Managing Director Ken White, Managing Director Ryan Plummer and Directors Mark Schuessler and Ryan Tetrault, to represent seller Topa Equities. The buyer, Omninet Capital, represented itself.

“The buyer and seller are very sophisticated private family offices, which further validates the narrative that a majority of the sales taking place right now involve noninstitutional investors,” Fulp said in a news release.

“Private investors will likely continue to control the market until there is greater clarity with regard to COVID-19 and the effect it is going to have on the economy and real estate.”

Omninet has made big waves in the market before. In December, the company bought the Solar Drive Business Park, a 136,744-square-foot Class A building in Oxnard.

“These Westlake properties are a good addition to our existing portfolio along the 101 corridor,” said Michael Danielpour, a managing partner at Omninet Capital. “This is the fourth acquisition of this size we have completed in the past 90 days and we continue to be very active. Our goal is to purchase another $250 million of commercial assets by the end of this year.”

FUNDING FOR HOUSING
Ventura County and the city of Thousand Oaks are working together to push forward on affordable housing in the region.

On June 16, the county’s Board of Supervisors voted to enter into a joint Permanent Local Housing Allocation Program application with Thousand Oaks, and on June 23, the Thousand Oaks City Council also voted to be part of the joint application.

The program is similar to the HOME Consortium, another partnership involving county and city governments. Whereas the HOME Consortium is funded through federal programs, and the county reports to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the PLHA is funded through the state of California.

The county of Ventura and the city of Thousand Oaks are partners in both the Home Consortium and the PHLA, and together the programs have brought millions of dollars in affordable housing funding to the area. The Consortium gave Ventura County $1.3 million for the 2020 fiscal year, with $267,022 – slightly more than 20 percent – earmarked for Thousand Oaks.

Similarly, the county as a whole expects to get $1.2 million in PHLA funding, with more than a quarter of the funding ($296,040) directed toward Thousand Oaks.

In his report to the City Council, Community Development Director Mark Towne said a benefit of being in partnership with the county is that Thousand Oaks can work with the larger county to fund projects to help the entire region, even if some of the projects are not in Thousand Oaks. The city doesn’t have any projects identified for PHLA funding, but Towne said the city would have the opportunity to access the funding for future projects.

• Send submissions for the commercial real estate column to Amber Hair at ahair@pacbiztimes.com.