Oxford Properties buys business park in Los Angeles for $133.5m

Oxford Properties business park in Los Angeles for $133.5m

Oxford Properties Group has made its first direct acquisition in Los Angeles County.

Oxford Properties has bought Santa Clarita Innovation Park (SCIP), a 14-building mixed-use business park, situated on 118.5 acres in the Greater Los Angeles city of Santa Clarita, for US$133.5 million.

Santa Clarita Innovation Park is leased to a variety of industrial and life sciences tenants.

The transaction also includes development rights to 40+ acres of land within the campus, with a wide array of zoned commercial uses.

Oxford will explore a range of development options as it determines how best to enhance the site, while meeting the needs of the local and business communities.

“Substantially growing our life sciences and industrial businesses represent our highest conviction investment strategies and top priorities at Oxford,” said Chad Remis, Executive Vice President, North America at Oxford Properties. “The acquisition of Santa Clarita Innovation Park, and its additional development capacity, uniquely provides us with flexibility to build on our convictions in a Los Angeles market with an overwhelming scarcity of infill developable land.”

With both asset classes featuring prominently within SCIP’s existing tenancies, the acquisition continues Oxford’s recent industrial and life sciences growth. Having increased its weighting to these sectors in support of its global capital allocation strategy, life sciences, logistics and residential are targeted to account for approximately 45-60% of its global AUM by 2025.

Oxford has previously acquired six life sciences assets in the U.S. this year, accounting for more than US$1.2 billion in deployed capital when factoring in development opportunities. They’ve included three West Coast assets—Public Market Emeryville and Foundry31 in the Berkeley/Emeryville corridor of San Francisco’s East Bay, and Boren Labs in Seattle—and three fully leased Boston-area properties.

Oxford continues to significantly grow its U.S. logistics business, and recently announced it had agreed terms to acquire a 149 building, 14.5 million square foot light industrial portfolio across 12 U.S. markets from KKR for US$2.2 billion. The portfolio is comprised of high-quality distribution buildings primarily located in urban infill locations, and complements Oxford’s existing U.S. big box logistics platform, IDI Logistics. 

The sale of Santa Clarita Innovation Park was led by Newmark on behalf of funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management and Intertex Companies.