AvalonBay Begins Work on LA County Apartments
AvalonBay has bought five acres of land through a series of transactions for the development of a new apartment property that the Washington, D.C.-based REIT says will be the largest in that city.
By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor
Glendora, Calif.—AvalonBay has bought five acres of land through a series of transactions for the development of a new apartment property that the Washington, D.C.-based REIT says will be the largest in that city. To be called Avalon Glendora, a 256-unit apartment community will also have 4,000 square feet of ground floor retail space at the northeast corner of E Route 66 and Glendora Ave.
The project, which was approved by the Glendora City Council in May, sits along the pathway of the future Metro Gold Line Foothill extension. The extension will be from the current terminus in Pasadena east through the “Foothill Cities” of LA County. Glendora is a city of about 50,000 in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, east of downtown LA.
Completion of the project is slated for late 2014. Avalon Glendora will include a children’s play area, dog park, basketball courts, pools, patios and a fitness area and club room.
Lee & Associates-LA North/Ventura principals Jim Fisher, Mike Smith and John Battle represented the buyer in all of the transactions, and sellers in two of them. Stacy Martin, a senior vice president in Lee’s City of Industry office, also represented the seller of one of the parcels, 512 S Glendora Ave.
Multifamily development is in high gear in greater LA, but land can sometimes be hard to find. According to the Smith, the sellers received “several strong offers.” Ultimately, however, one of the deciding factors for AvalonBay was that, as a REIT, it wasn’t dependent on third party financing, he notes.
