Walt Disney Parks and Resorts U.S. Inc. paid $115.29 million for Yamaha Motor Corp. USA’s former headquarters at 6555 Katella Avenue in Cypress, according to the grant deed cited by multiple outlets. The sale closed September 23 but surfaced only nine days later, on October 2, when Avison Young announced it without naming the buyer, and public records and the Orange County Register identified Disney. The campus covers 25 acres and 278,964 square feet of industrial, flex-warehouse and office space on a city block bounded by Katella Avenue, Holder Street and Yamaha Way. Outlets put it between six and seven miles from Disneyland Resort, depending on the measuring point.
Disney’s explanation is short. It told the Register the campus will support back-of-house operations and described the purchase as a sound investment given its footprint and proximity to the resort, according to WDWinfo’s account. Reports describe that kind of work as including laundry and costuming, but Disney has not said which departments will move. The Dis Insider noted that Disney has not tied the purchase to any specific Disneyland expansion project. Fan sites have linked it to the DisneylandForward expansion plan, but that is their inference, not a company statement.
By my arithmetic, the price works out to about $413 a square foot and $4.6 million an acre. Matthews put the average Orange County industrial sale at $349 a square foot in the second quarter, so Disney paid roughly 18 percent above that average. The comparison is not like for like. The campus includes office space, the buyer is an owner-user, and the deal carries a leaseback. The building area is about 11,160 square feet per acre, a floor-area ratio of roughly 0.26 on gross land by my math, which is consistent with Avison Young’s pitch of one of the largest industrial redevelopment opportunities in Southern California. Disney has not said it plans to redevelop the site…