Windset Farms has leased this building at 1267 Furukawa Way in Santa Maria.

Canadian agribusiness Windset Farms, which has 168 acres of growing area in Santa Maria, will take up residency in a recently-constructed industrial building at 1267 Furukawa Way.

The international family-owned farm and natural produce supplier inked a 10-year lease on a 25,562 square foot building with plans to use it for cold storage.

Al Segal of GPS Commercial Real Estate Services represented both parties.

Windset has a few large greenhouses in Santa Maria and is a major agricultural player in the city. It will move into the new facility in the next couple of months, said GPS President Pam Scott.

NEW MEDICAL CENTER

Dignity Health’s Arroyo Grande Community Hospital will celebrate the grand opening of the Matthew Will Memorial Medical Center from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 11.

The 45,012-square-foot center is located adjacent to the hospital’s campus at 850 Fair Oaks Drive. It broke ground in November of 2017 and was constructed by the Will family to honor their late son, Matthew Will, who died from cancer just after turning 20, according to a news release. A memorial collage will be placed in the first floor lobby.

The first floor of the building will house the Dignity Health Lab and Imaging suite, which offers CT scans, X-rays, ultrasounds and bone density scanning. Also on the first floor are specialty services such as orthopedics, neurology, obstetrics and gynecology.

The second floor will be for community physicians. The Mission Hope Cancer Center Arroyo Grande will be on the third floor.

INDUSTRIAL RATES DROP

NAI Capital reported that Ventura County’s industrial market waned in the first quarter of 2019 with rental rates slipping amid a slight bump up in the vacancy rate. Meanwhile, county office rates climbed in the first quarter.

The average asking rent for industrial slipped to 64 cents per square foot in the first quarter, down 1 cent per square foot from the prior quarter and up 4.9 percent year-over-year. The vacancy rate inched up 30 basis points over the quarter to 2.4 percent; that’s up 10 basis points from the prior year, the real estate firm reported.

Contributing to vacancy rates was a 423,106-square-foot distribution facility in Camarillo, recently vacated by Deckers Brands, the report stated.

But the office market has seen a steady gain since the Great Recession, NAI reported. Over the past decade, asking rents have risen to $2.32 per square foot, up 3.6 percent over the first quarter and 4.5 percent over the first quarter of 2018. In spite of this, asking rents still remain 6.1 percent below their 2007 peak.

Leases for Class B space slightly outperformed those for Class A spaces during the first quarter, NAI reported. Office vacancy rates have remained around 11 percent since 2015, the report stated, “indicating a balance in the market.”

Although rent prices are flattening, the West County Port Hueneme area is seeing an uptick in demand for industrial space, NAI reported. The average asking rent is 70 cents per square foot. That’s up 4.4 percent from the fourth quarter of 2018 and 13 percent year-over-year.

Industrial vacancy rates in the West County area were 1.5 percent for the first quarter, 90 basis points below the county average. Sales were up from a year ago, increasing 18 percent to $172 per square foot — the highest average price the submarket has seen since 2009, NAI reported.

CELEBRATING THE ARTS

The Carpinteria Valley Chamber of Commerce will host a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Lynda Fairly Carpinteria Arts Center at 5 p.m. May 10.

The center is at 865 Linden Ave. in a 2,600-square-foot building that formerly held a Cajun Kitchen restaurant.

The renovations began in 2018, and the center has raised $3.5 million to fund its remodeling, arts center Executive Director Rebbecca Stebbins said.

• Send submissions for the commercial real estate column to Annabelle Blair at ablair@pacbiztimes.com.