INVESTORS TO REDEVELOP OLD PLANT.

Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Staff writer

BURBANK - A partnership that includes the investment arm of the Roy E. Disney family and focuses on job-generating projects has bought a former aerospace facility in Pomona that it will convert into an industrial park, officials said Monday.

The Genesis Real Estate Fund II, managed by Burbank-based Shamrock Capital Advisors, and Seventh Street Development acquired 20.6 acres of land that includes a shuttered plant formerly occupied by General Dynamics.

The partnership plans to turn the site into a 380,000-square-foot industrial park called Mission-71 Business Park. It is adjacent to the Corona Expressway at Mission Boulevard and will include a freeway ramp.

The Genesis fund is contributing $8.5 million to the project.

The move underscores efforts by economic-development experts and elected officials to preserve the region's shrinking industrial base. The Los Angeles area remains the nation's strongest manufacturing center.

"We think it's very important and it's a product type we are very interested in assisting with development," Mark Shaffer, Shamrock's managing partner, said of the industrial sector.

Several years ago the firm helped develop the Van Nuys Business Park near Woodley Avenue and the Van Nuys Airport.

The Pomona site is already titled and has been subdivided into 22 parcels, Schaffer said. Genesis' investment will finance the acquisition of the site and the development of 19 buildings. They will range in size from 13,000 to 70,000 square feet with development occurring in two phases over the next 30 months.

They will then be sold to the owners needing warehouse space or a light manufacturing facility, he said.

This partnership will mark the second project Genesis has done with Long Beach-based Seventh Street Development and its fourth project with Seventh Street principals Craig Furniss and Doug Hinchliffe.

This Genesis fund totals $104 million and provides developers with financing packages that typically range from $10 million to $80 million.

Shamrock focuses its investments in low- to moderate- income neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Kern, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara, Orange, San Diego and Imperial counties.

The initial Genesis Fund, credited as the first investment vehicle of its kind in the United States, has helped develop more than $250 million in retail, industrial, mixed-use and creative office development and was responsible for the creation and/or retention of an estimated 5,000 jobs in Southern California, the company said.

Shamrock Capital Advisors is an affiliate of Burbank-based Shamrock Holdings of California, Inc., the investment arm of the Roy E. Disney family.

Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said this type of private sector involvement is critical to preserving the region's industrial base.

"It's a pretty important stake in the ground," Kyser said.

These are the kind of infill projects that meet the expansion needs of existing companies.

"This is what we're going to have to do in Los Angeles unless we come across an unexpected elephant in terms of land," he said.

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