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Jenny Craig Signs $10.6M Lease for Carlsbad Site; HouseRebate Stays Online With TRO From Court

Jenny Craig Signs $10.6M Lease for Carlsbad Site

San Diego Real Estate

BY MANDY JACKSON

Staff Writer

Jenny Craig Inc. has signed a 10-year lease valued at $10.6 million for 48,904 square feet in Carlsbad.

John Casey and Lynn LaChapelle of San Diego-based Burnham Real Estate Services represented Jenny Craig in its site search and lease negotiations.

Gary Williams and Chris Pascale of CB Richard Ellis and Lannie Allee of Coldwell Banker Commercial represented the building’s owner, Ocean Terrace LLC, a partnership of Dallas-based Koll Development Co. and Signa Investments Inc., a Delaware corporation.

Jenny Craig will move into its two-story building in September. The facility is part of Ocean Terrace Corporate Center near Interstate 5 and Palomar Airport Road. The four-building, 185,000-square-foot property was developed by Koll and completed in 1999.

According to Charlie Abdi, a senior vice president in Koll’s local office, Ocean Terrace is now about 85 percent occupied, and negotiations for the remainder of the space are under way.

Last June, Jenny Craig sold its 75,000-square-foot building in Torrey Pines to National University, its next-door neighbor, for $21 million. Since then, the company has leased space from the new owner while searching for a new headquarters building.

Casey said the search began in April of 2001 in the University Towne Center and Sorrento Mesa areas.

“As they had time to digest the market, they decided to look at Del Mar and Carlsbad,” where rents were lower, Casey said. The areas were still close to communities where some of the company’s executives live.

Aside from palatable rents, Casey said Jenny Craig was attracted to the fact that it will be the only tenant in its new facility, and will have the ability to place its own signs on the building.

“I think they were looking at the traffic patterns and did a search of where their employees live,” Abdi said. Many of the approximately 150 employees lived north of Del Mar, he said.

Last month, Jenny Craig’s shareholders approved a $115 million sale of 80 percent of the company to a private investment group consisting of ACI Capital Co., Inc. and DB Capital Partners, Inc.

HouseRebate Stays Online With TRO From Court

By Mandy Jackson

Staff Writer

San Diego-based HouseRebate.com had to get a temporary restraining order to keep Palo Alto-based Homes.com, its Web hosting company, from shutting down or tampering with its Web site.

HouseRebate, an online discount residential real estate broker, received the temporary order May 23 from San Diego Superior Court Judge Michael M. Anello in Vista.

On June 6, Anello will consider an injunction barring Homes.com from tampering with the Web site indefinitely.

HouseRebate founder and CEO Brian Yui sought the order after receiving word from Homes.com that it was planning to end HouseRebate’s service because of complaints and threats of lawsuits from other Homes.com customers. They did not want their listings shown on a discount broker’s Web site.

Homes.com hosts Web sites and provides property listings for 18,000 real estate brokers and agents. It has a sales office in San Diego.

“Every agent and broker that hosts a Web site on Homes.com has the same listings,” Yui said. “You would think if I had a listing, the broker would want to maximize his exposure.”

Two other companies, from which Yui has had no complaints, host HouseRebate’s Web site. However, the company can’t afford to lose Homes.com’s service. “Unfortunately, no one has the data they have,” he said.

Tom Orsi, spokesman for Homes.com, said the company is working on getting HouseRebate’s case moved to bankruptcy court in San Francisco because the company is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Also, Orsi said, Homes.com does not encourage discount brokers.

HouseRebate offers a 1 percent rebate to homebuyers and sells homes for as low as a 4.5 commission, compared to the traditional 6 percent.

Grubb & Ellis-CB Richard Ellis Deal Off the Table

A deal reportedly in the works in mid-May between two commercial real estate brokerages, both with a strong local presence, is apparently off.

On May 24, Illinois- and New York-based Grubb & Ellis Co. announced that discussions with another commercial real estate brokerage to buy the company ended without a purchase agreement.

Los Angeles-based CB Richard Ellis Services Inc. was reportedly in discussions with Grubb & Ellis to buy the rival company.

In a press release, Grubb & Ellis said it ended discussions with a third party that made an unsolicited merger proposal earlier in May.

In the statement, the company’s president and CEO Barry Barovick, said, “We came to realize that the potential merger partner did not share our vision regarding the industry in general, and our integrated business model in particular.”

Also, Barovick said, the two companies had offices in many of the same markets and Grubb & Ellis feared some of its employees in those markets would lose their jobs.

CB Richard Ellis employs more than 150 people in San Diego, and more than 10,000 worldwide. Locally, Grubb & Ellis employs about 20 people, and more than 8,000 internationally.

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