Development caters to smaller buinesses
By Daniel Wolowicz camarillo@theacorn.com

MOVE-IN READY- TOLD Corp. recently opened the 13-acre Flynn Road Business Park at the corner of Flynn and Adolfo roads. The $35-million development includes small industrial units and upscale office condominiums. Median sales prices range from $350,000 to about $450,000.

Real estate developer Rod Gilbert, president of Camarillo-based TOLD Corp., said the recently opened Flynn Road Business Park, a $35-million development in Camarillo, offers smaller businesses the chance to buy their own office or industrial space and invest in a local real estate market that continues to appreciate.

"There's an assumption out there that companies that need a small amount of space don't have money," said Bill Robe, TOLD'S vice president. "That's not true. There are a lot of very, very successful businesses that just don't have very big real estate needs, but they do need a place."

With its high cost of living, driven by a pricey housing market, Ventura County is becoming home to fewer major manufacturers.

Technicolor recently laid off 630 workers and will soon shutter its 900,000-square-foot manufacturing and packing plant along the 101 Freeway.

Less than a mile south, two industrial buildings on Camino Ruiz- both around 100,000 square feet- remain empty. Taken together, all three buildings will probably account for more than 1 million square feet of available industrial space within a very small radius.

That doesn't worry Gilbert. He said his 13-acre business park was designed for "mom and pop" businesses and not for the largescale industrial client that needs an enormous warehouse.

Once the final phase of industrial units is built next year, the development will include more than 200,000 square feet of total office and industrial space. It will feature two office buildings, seven multi-tenant industrial buildings and four single-occupant industrial buildings.

The industrial units are about 1,400 square feet and the office condos average 1,300. Gilbert said the median price for the industrial units is around $350,000, while the office condos cost about $450,000.

"If you're investing in a piece of real estate that your company uses every day, you pretty much just inoculate yourself against the normal cycles of real estate's ups and downs," Robe said.

Gilbert said the idea to build the smaller industrial units beside office condos was modeled after another TOLD-owned business park just down the road from the new development.

He said he saw a growing number of locally owned family businesses that wanted smaller industrial spaces.

Gilbert said the decision to level Clairol's former 112,000-square-foot manufacturing facility on the corner of Flynn and Adolfo roads, and the purchase of the neighboring empty lot for $6.2 million in 2004 didn't come without some reservations.

"It was a leap of faith on our part to know whether there was a market for this because if there isn't, then we built this product for someone who isn't interested," Gilbert said.

That leap of faith seems to be paying off. Of the 71 available units, 37 have been sold or are in escrow, he said.

To help lessen the new business park's impact on the environment, TOLD used the crushed concrete from the razed Clairol plant to repave Flynn Road and surface the development's parking lot.

Additionally, the developer built a selfcontained storm runoff system- the first of its kind in the county. The development uses an underground filtration system, Gilbert said, that reduces the amount of runoff water from the property to the city's sewer system.

According to company reports, the family owned TOLD Corp. has built nearly 5 million square feet of commercial and industrial property in Ventura County. It was founded by John B. Gilbert in 1959.