Hawthorne Flex for Sale - Hawthorne/Gardena
12536 Chadron Avenue is a fee simple offering: a freestanding 22,665 SF manufacturing and R&D building on 1.03 acres in the heart of Hawthorne, California, the South Bay's "Space Corridor." The property is 100% net-leased to Venturi Astrolab, Inc., a NASA Artemis prime contractor who just received a $219 million task order on May 26, 2026.
Tenant Overview: Venturi Astrolab is one of two prime contractors selected under NASA's $4.6 billion, 13-year Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services (LTVS) program. The May 2026 task order, awarded for the CLV-1 crewed lunar rover, anchors first delivery to the Moon by 2028. The company has secured commercial contracts valued at more than $160 million across eight customers for its upcoming Mission 1 deployment, in addition to institutional venture capital from Jane Street, Apollo Capital, and 0xVentures, a strategic partnership with Monaco-based Venturi Group, and corporate alliances with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Axiom Space, and Odyssey Space Research. Astrolab designed and showcased the lunar rover that secured the NASA task order inside this exact building.
Building and Build-Out: The asset is a high-quality manufacturing and R&D facility, originally constructed in 1951 and fully renovated in 2020. Building features include 12- to 20-foot clear heights, three ground-level doors, 800 amp 480/277-volt three-phase four-wire power, brick and CMU construction, and a single-ply TPO membrane roof. M-2 General Industrial zoning permits a broad range of aerospace, manufacturing, hangar, and R&D uses already approved and active on the property. The interior is configured with Clean Rooms 1 and 2, two air locks, an avionics lab, a machine shop, a sand box and demo area, mission control, and shipping and receiving storage, with approximately 17% conventional office and conference space clustered along the Chadron Avenue frontage.
Hawthorne Submarket: Hawthorne is one of the tightest industrial submarkets in the country. Direct industrial vacancy stands at 4.0% as of Q1 2026, with approximately 1.8% average annual vacancy since 2015 and zero square feet currently under construction. The submarket has recorded approximately 12.1% average annual rent growth since 2015, and only 37,680 square feet of new industrial product has been delivered over the same eleven-year window. Industrial tenants located within a 50-mile radius of the San Pedro Bay port complex command a 9% rent premium for reduced drayage rates and simplified logistics.
Rare Ownership Opportunity: Hawthorne corridor ownership rarely turns over. Across an inventory of more than 175 industrial buildings, the submarket has recorded just 76 trades over the past eleven years, and recent activity has been markedly tighter: only one sale closed in 2023, one in 2024, and two in 2025, four total transactions across the trailing three-year window. With vacancy at record lows, no new product under construction, and rents compounding at double-digit annual rates, owners hold long term and assets of this caliber surface for acquisition very infrequently.
Demand Backdrop: Aerospace and defense leasing across Greater Los Angeles totaled 3.0 million square feet in Q1 2026 alone, equal to 86% of the entire full-year 2025 total, with 88% of that quarterly activity transacting in the South Bay corridor (CBRE Research). Hawthorne's specific Q1 2026 transaction set included a 54,308 SF lease signed by ThinKom Solutions at 4910 W Rosecrans, a phased-array antenna manufacturer with a hardware profile and build-out specification almost identical to the subject building. Los Angeles County captured the most prime DOD contract dollars of any U.S. county in 2025 at $8.9 billion, while California ranked first among all U.S. states at $22.1 billion. The Department of the Air Force has requested $339 billion for fiscal year 2027, a $92.5 billion increase over current spending.
Year 1 Bonus Depreciation Opportunity: The building's specialized clean-room, air-lock, avionics-lab, machine-shop, and process-specific build-out qualifies for shorter five, seven, and fifteen-year cost-recovery lives rather than the 39-year office shell, presenting a meaningful Year 1 bonus depreciation opportunity for the right buyer. A CBRE Cost-Segregation Analysis is available in the data room. Buyers should consult their own tax professional to model the after-tax impact for their specific situation.
Location: The property sits in the heart of Hawthorne's Space Corridor and offers immediate access to Interstate 105, Interstate 405, and Interstate 110, with proximity to Los Angeles International Airport and the San Pedro Bay port complex. Blue-chip corporate neighbors include SpaceX, Amazon, Lowe's, Target, and PetSmart. The 30-mile radius around the property captures more than 10.4 million people, one of the deepest aerospace, defense, and advanced manufacturing labor pools in the country.
Tours of the property require 48 hours of notice and can be coordinated through the listing team.
The full Offering Memorandum and financials are available in the data room after executing the digital CA at https://www.pcplistings.com/listings/12536chadron/.
