COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE : Drive-In Theater Switches Over to Freight

The site of a former drive-in movie theater will serve as a new distribution facility for Performance Team Freight Systems, a logistics company, which has signed a 10-year, $20-million lease for Pacific Distribution Center, a 356,000-square-foot industrial building at Norwalk Boulevard and Lakeland Road in Santa Fe Springs.

The 15.4-acre distribution center is a development of Pacific Theaters Realty Corp., which has embarked on a program to convert its drive-in locations into “a diverse commercial, industrial and retail real estate portfolio,� according to Neil Haltrecht, executive vice president at Pacific Theaters Realty.

Haltrecht said Los Angeles-based Pacific Theaters is developing projects at eight of the company’s 20 drive-ins around Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties. Eventually, all 20 drive-ins will be converted to other uses, he said. The conversions are part of a program in which Pacific Theaters is developing approximately 2 million square feet of real estate projects in the western United States, Haltrecht said.

The new building leased by Performance Team Freight Systems will service the West Coast for Performance, which distributes merchandise for Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, the Limited and other companies throughout the United States, according to Michael Kaplan, CEO of Performance.

Performance Team Freight Systems was represented in lease negotiations by Tres Reid of CB Richard Ellis. Stephen Batcheller and Ben Seybold of CB Richard Ellis represented Pacific Theaters Realty.