Travelers Insurance has signed a large office lease in Diamond Bar, Calif., in eastern Los Angeles County. The 41,646-square-foot, 66-month lease is at Gateway Corporate Center — a Class A office complex located at 21680 Gateway Drive. Following the closing of this deal, the building is now fully occupied.

CBRE Senior Vice President, Philip Woodford, and Vice President, Steven Saunders, led the negotiations on behalf of the landlord, Buchanan Street Partners. JLL Executive Managing Director, Kevin Mechelke, represented the insurance company.

Travelers is set to occupy more than half of the office space at 21680 Gateway Drive following a move from the neighboring 21688 Gateway Drive — an 81,000-square-foot office building that was part of the former Gateway campus.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, the project executed eight new office leases and renewed and expanded two additional tenants’ spaces,” Saunders said. “The fundamentals of the San Gabriel Valley and Inland Empire office markets continue to strengthen as the vacancy rate decreases to historic lows.”

In 2016, Buchanan Street dished out $44 million to acquire Gateway Corporate Center from its previous owner, Cornerstone Holdings. At the time, the property encompassed two 162,339-square-foot office buildings that were later split. However, the two buildings remain connected through a landscaped courtyard. The tenant roster at Gateway Corporate Center includes Global Imports; Cushman & Wakefield; Impro; Sampe; and NuBridge Commercial Lending, among others.

Completed in 2000 and renovated in 2020, Gateway Corporate Center is part of a 155-acre, master-planned business park located just east of state routes 60 and 57 and bordering Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

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Spanish financial services provider BBVA will be relocating and expanding its offices to Two Manhattan West — a 1.9-million-square-foot, Brookfield Properties-owned building near Penn Station. The firm will take up 74,000 square feet of office space across the eighth and ninth floors to accommodate its staff of roughly 350 employees currently running U.S. operations.

JLL’s Joe Messina and Cushman & Wakefield’s Paul Ferraro brokered the deal on behalf of BBVA, while an in-house team of Duncan McCuaig, Mikael Nahmias, Dave Caperna and Dan Roberts represented the landlord.

“We are pleased to welcome BBVA to its new headquarters at Two Manhattan West, a trophy tower that sets the standard for workplace excellence,” said Callie Haines, Brookfield Properties’ executive vice president for the company’s Northeast region.

“We are looking forward to moving into a prime building in a very attractive location to provide the best possible experience to our BBVA team in New York,” added Regina Gill, head of U.S. corporate investment banking.

The move marks a significant increase in BBVA’s footprint in New York City as the company will leave behind its current premises at Fisher Brothers’ 1345 Sixth Ave., where it occupies 42,000 square feet. At Two Manhattan West, the company will be joining a tenant roster that already includes the likes of audit and tax advisory firm KPMG; global law firms Clifford Chance and Cravath; as well as Swaine & Moore LLP.

Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the 58-story Two Manhattan West is part of the massive, six-building, mixed-use complex spanning eight acres. The superblock in the city’s Midtown West District provides high-end residential real estate, prime retail and office space.

Expected to welcome tenants in the early months of 2024, Two Manhattan West is currently 80% leased, demonstrating that there’s plenty of demand for state-of-the-art workspaces even in the era of hybrid work arrangements.

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Electric vehicle company Mullen Automotive will occupy the former site of Kraft Heinz Lunchables in Fullerton, Calif. The company signed a five-year, triple-net lease deal with Link Industrial for a 121,615-square-foot warehouse at 1500 E. Walnut Ave. Negotiations on behalf of the landlord were conducted by a CBRE team consisting of Ben Seybold and Sean Ward. The lease rate was $2.01 per square foot.

“Mullen Automotive … was drawn to the freestanding building because of its heavy power capacity and proximity to its own headquarters in nearby Brea,” said Seybold, an executive vice president at CBRE. “The new lease helps the company expand their local operations and Orange County footprint.”

The Brea, Calif.-based EV startup will use its new premises to expand its battery development and production capabilities.

“We are one step closer to fulfilling our commitment to providing the next generation of battery technology to our lineup of EV vehicles, providing a clean and safe alternative to current lithium-ion batteries,” Mullen CEO and Chairman, David Michery, said.

The property at 1500 E. Walnut Ave. hosted Kraft’s food manufacturing facility between 1989 and 2018. Before that, it had been part of the Orange County industrial market, hosting Claussen’s pickle factory in the mid-70s.

Soaring 32 feet high, the warehouse offers ample vertical space for accommodating tall equipment and maximizing storage potential. Moreover, for efficient loading and unloading, the space boasts 17 dock-high doors and two grade-level doors to ensure seamless logistics. Additionally, a generously sized, fenced yard provides secure outdoor storage and the flexibility to expand operations.

The building also includes 6,234 square feet of office space spread across two floors and is conveniently located near SR-57, SR-22, SR-55, SR-91 and I-5. It also lies within 30 miles of both the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach.

Notably, Orange County has transformed itself into a thriving hub for electric vehicle manufacturers and suppliers, drawing in notable companies like Tesla, Karma Automotive, Harbinger Motors, Rivian Automotive and EV battery startup Romeo Power.

Link Industrial maintains a commanding position in the U.S. industrial real estate market with a vast network of more than 3,500 warehouse and industrial properties. Among these, Orange County holds a prominent position with Link Industrial managing 119 properties totaling 6 million square feet of industrial space in the region.

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Janssen Supply Group, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, has become the first occupant of a biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Holly Springs, N.C. This $2 billion project, developed by FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies (FDB), encompasses 1 million square feet and is expected to be fully operational by 2025. Located in the Triangle region and just 20 miles from downtown Raleigh, N.C., the state-of-the-art facility is the result of a collaboration between Janssen Supply Group and FDB. Specifically, it supports their clinical and commercial manufacturing efforts; strengthens their partnership; and contributes to the production of Janssen’s clinical and commercial pipeline.

FDB announced its plans for the Holly Springs facility in January 2021, and construction began in October of the same year. After approximately two years since its groundbreaking, CEO and President, Lars Petersen, revealed that the final product would be a complex spanning nearly 1 million square feet and consisting of seven buildings. This expansion is expected to create 725 manufacturing jobs in North Carolina.

Once completed, the Holly Springs life sciences facility is set to become the largest biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility in North America for end-to-end cell culture contract development and manufacturing (CDMO). Equipped with advanced technology and state-of-the-art equipment, it boasts two spacious manufacturing suites with four 20,000 L bioreactors. This enables the facility to produce drug substances, packaging, assembly, and labeling. Additionally, the facility has the capacity to expand with an additional 24 bioreactors.

Moreover, sustainability is a central focus of the Holly Springs project with the facility operating solely on clean energy and implementing advanced waste disposal and recycling practices.

Fujifilm Diosynth, a division of Fujifilm, is the parent company known for its historical background in photography. In recent years, Fujifilm has redirected its resources toward the health care sector. As a contract drug manufacturer, FDB specializes in large-scale production of medications developed by other pharmaceutical companies, rather than developing drugs themselves.

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A recent analysis by CommercialEdge of nearly 80,000 office properties in the United States, with a combined debt of $920 billion, revealed that 16% of all outstanding loans are expected to mature by 2024, with a second, larger wave of maturities totaling 33% by 2026. The majority of these maturing loans are located in major markets, with Manhattan, Class A properties, and urban areas leading the way.

The timing of this surge in loan maturities is concerning, given the current confluence of factors that are squeezing office owners: weaker demand, rising costs, and declining property values. Simultaneously, banks and investors are seeking to reduce their exposure to the office sector.

Additionally, office building tenants now hold a stronger bargaining position, enabling them to negotiate favorable lease terms, including shorter lease durations. They can also require landlords to finance amenity renovations – further increasing costs and cutting into owners’ net income. This in turn has led to a rise in office delinquency rates, and the outlook for the upcoming years favors further growth in the number of underwater loans.

Naturally, since it holds the largest market share due to its vast total office space and premium pricing per square foot, Manhattan is most at risk. The analysis highlighted some 1,159 office spaces in Manhattan with approximately $20 billion of loans maturing by the end of 2024, nearly twice the amount of runner-up Los Angeles.

In fact, the California metro is looking at a total of $10.3 billion of loans maturing over the same period. Other metros with a substantial volume of maturing mortgages include Chicago ($10 billion), Washington, D.C. ($8.6 billion), Houston ($8 billion), and Boston ($8 billion).

A significant number of maturing loans is associated with higher-quality properties. Some $203 billion office loans maturing by 2026 are secured by assets rated “A+/A” by CommercialEdge, with loans backing lower rated properties (“B” or “C”) add up to roughly $98 billion.

Manhattan leads in A+/A property mortgages maturing, with a staggering $47 billion. Los Angeles sits in second place with approximately $16 billion, followed by Chicago with $13 billion, and Washington, D.C. with $12 billion.

In terms of Class B and Class C office spaces, Manhattan again holds the top spot with $10 billion in maturing loans. Houston follows with roughly $8 billion, Los Angeles with $6 billion. Chicago and Philadelphia have $5 billion each in debt that’s coming due in the near future.

Read the complete report on CommercialEdge for more details about the market areas that are most likely to be impacted by short-term loans coming due in the upcoming years.

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