County buys former Fleetwood buildings in Riverside

 

Two office buildings on the headquarters campus of motor-home maker Fleetwood Enterprises Inc. in Riverside have been acquired by Riverside County for $6.6 million.

CT Realty Investors Inc. sold the two buildings at 3125 and 3075 Myers St. in Citrus Park West business park just south of the 91 Freeway and west of Van Buren Boulevard, the seller said.

The county plans to use the office space for its Department of Mental Health and a data center, said James “Watty” Watson, president of CT Realty.

Aliso Viejo-based CT Realty purchased Citrus Park in 2008 from Fleetwood and converted the 417,811-square-foot, 12-building property to a multi-tenant business park offering office and warehouse buildings for sale or lease.

Fleetwood filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2009 and its assets were sold.

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Photo: The former Fleetwood headquarters in Riverside.  Credit: CT Realty Investors 

Former Burbank condo project sold as apartments

 

A recent Burbank condominium development where the units were never sold will be converted to apartments by its new owner.

Raintree Partners, a Laguna Niguel real estate investment and development company, paid $14 million for Taiko Village, a 43-unit condo complex at 1601 Scott Road that was built in 2009 but never opened.

“We will complete the small amount of finish work that remains at the property, obtain the certificate of occupancy and then rent the units out as apartments,” said Jeff Allen, chief executive of Raintree.

Taiko Village consists of three buildings on 1.12 acres, with a mix of townhouses and one-, two- and three-bedroom flats.

The acquisition brings Raintree’s holdings in California to 12 apartment complexes with more than 1,800 units, Allen said.

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Photo: Taiko Village in Burbank. Credit: Raintree Partners

Recording Academy, which awards Grammys, sells former headquarters

The Recording Academy, the organization that hands out the music industry’s annual Grammy Awards, sold its former Santa Monica headquarters to developers.

Developer Trammell Crow Co. and investment firm Westport Capital Partners bought the unoccupied three-story office building at 3402 Pico Blvd. and two adjacent residential parcels, real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis said.

The price was not disclosed, but Westside real estate experts familiar with the property valued the deal at more than $10 million.

Trammell Crow hasn’t decided exactly what to do with the property yet, Senior Managing Director Brad Cox said, but some kind of residential development is likely.

“It’s a great piece of real estate in Santa Monica, where you [ordinarily] can’t find two and half acres of contiguous space,” Cox said.

The 39,128-square-foot office building constructed in 1969 has been vacant since the Recording Academy moved in 2009 to larger quarters in the nearby Lantana office park, which is home to many entertainment industry businesses.

Trammell Crow may refurbish the former Recording Academy building and rent it to a single tenant while building housing alongside. Or the developer may demolish the office and a vacant 11-unit apartment house on one of the adjacent parcels to make way for a new apartment complex.

“We’re looking at a combination of possibilities,” Cox said.

Development would conform with the city’s recent general plan update, he said. The east Santa Monica neighborhood that was formerly an industrial center is in the path of planned light rail service and is gentrifying.

“It’s turning into kind of a hipster location,” Cox said.

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Photo: Former Recording Academy headquarters in Santa Monica. Credit: CB Richard Ellis

 

Scam Watch: Investments, seniors, credit cards

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for.

Investment fraud –- A Fresno man has been indicted on mail and wire fraud charges related to an investment scheme that raised more than $2.9 million from victims. Janamjot “Jimmy” Sodhi is accused of defrauding investors from 2005 to 2011 through his company, Elite Financial Inc., federal prosecutors said. Sodhi told investors that he would use their money to purchase stocks, bonds and other investment instruments but instead used it for personal expenses and to pay returns to early investors, federal prosecutors said. Further, prosecutors said, Sodhi was not licensed by the state to make such investments and failed to inform clients that he was barred from the New York Stock Exchange in 2006.

Scams against seniors –- The Better Business Bureau said that older U.S. residents continue to be targets of scams. A survey by Investor Protection Trust in 2010 estimated that 20% of U.S. residents older than 65 have been victims of financial scams. The schemes include bereavement scams, in which people whose spouses just died are contacted and told that that they must pay their deceased spouses’ outstanding debts that did not exist. Other popular scams are work-at-home opportunities in which people are instructed to pay a fee to receive an opportunity to work from home or lottery scams in which they’re told they need to pay taxes upfront before they can receive a nonexistent lottery prize.  The Better Business Bureau cautions seniors never to pay for a job and never to wire money to people they do not know.

Small businesses –- The Federal Trade Commission is mailing refunds to about 100 small-business owners across the U.S. who were defrauded by companies that said they could reduce their expenses for processing credit card transactions. The FTC had accused several companies, including Merchant Processing Inc., Direct Merchant Processing Inc. and Vequity Financial Group Inc., of failing to disclose fees, concealed in pages of fine print, to their customers. Under a settlement the FTC reached with the companies, about $345,000 is being returned to merchants, the FTC said. Refunds will range from about $100 to more than $25,000, the FTC said.

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 -- Stuart Pfeifer