Pacific Prime Properties
Overview
As a privately-held, Los Angeles-based real estate investment firm, Pacific Prime Properties knows firsthand how hard it is to keep up with evolving energy benchmarking laws and ordinances across multiple cities. Established in 1989 by partners David J. Hager and Elliott D. Dolin, Pacific Prime Properties used their experience as established investors to accrue and hold combined interests in over 10 million square feet of industrial, R&D, medical office, and retail properties. Pacific Prime Properties originally hired Vert Energy Group to deal specifically with their residential benchmarking needs. As the organization has grown, though, they’ve continued to partner with Vert Energy Group to handle any commercial benchmarking ordinances required by the cities they hold real estate in.
The Problem
Expansion can often come at a cost and managing energy compliance for their multi-city portfolio became unmanageable for the Pacific Prime Properties internal team. Francine Pearce, office manager and associate, reports that the process for understanding and gathering the required compliance information and data for each building in each city had become too costly and complicated, making the company’s efforts unsustainable. Pearce says “[Our problem was] literally time and cost. The city made gathering the information so complicated. It became a time-wasting exercise in the sense of gathering the information, because the information is all out there, but to try and collect it and bring it all to one cohesive center was virtually impossible.”
The Solution
The team at Pacific Prime Properties quickly realized the benefits of consolidating their compliance needs with VertPro.com. After a brief, guided onboarding process, Pacific Prime Properties now had online benchmark data for multiple properties across the state that could be accessed in one place quickly, easily, and at little cost. They now had the insight they needed to feel secure with their compliance status. “We use the VertPro.com tool to see what’s coming,” Ms. Pearce says when asked how VertPro.com has impacted Pacific Prime’s compliance processes. “To be able to go online and see where [Vert Energy Group] is at with each of our different properties and to be able to pay online is great.” According to Pearce, Vert Energy Group and the VertPro.com tool have also made it easier to plan for the future. She states, “The recommendations that have come from the audits for cost savings have really been great … we’ve implemented a number of them.”
Conclusion
What does the future hold for Pacific Prime Properties and their energy and sustainability compliance efforts? According to Pearce, they’ll be seeking new investment opportunities with a primary emphasis on California industrial property in the price range of $3 million to $50 million. Properties with vacancy or short tenancy, as well as those needing renovation and/or repositioning, are of particular interest.
“Everyone who I have dealt with … has been great,” Pearce says. “If I’ve needed something revised or looked at, or have a question, [Vert Energy Group] has been available either by phone or via by email. The level of professionalism is really great. If somebody came to me and said they needed help with benchmarking, without any hesitation, I would recommend [Vert Energy Group].”