The Goodman Group, a major property development group based in Australia, is in escrow to buy Long Beach’s former Boeing C-17 manufacturing facility, City Manager Pat West confirmed Friday.
The massive 93-acre site, which includes a 1.1 million-square-foot assembly building, was once the production home for Boeing’s C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane before the facility shuttered in 2015. Boeing listed the property for sale in November with an undisclosed asking price.
Goodman specializes in industrial and commercial property development and management, according to its website. The company has an estimated $30.2 billion in assets and 384 properties under management globally. The company reportedly entered into escrow with Boeing earlier this week.
It’s not clear what specific plans the Goodman Group has for the site. A representative of Goodman could not be reached for comment Friday.
Goodman is considered the largest landlord for Amazon in Asia, Europe and Australia, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
Chief executive Greg Goodman told the newspaper in February that the company has been converting properties to residential and mixed-use projects in Australia.
“Data centres, residential, multi-storey logistics and other commercial uses are all potential value-added options,” Goodman said. “Goodman has sites capable of delivering more than 35,000 apartments, across multiple locations and management is focused on planning outcomes.”
The site, adjacent to the Long Beach Airport, is part of the city’s Globemaster Corridor Specific Plan to bring new businesses to the surrounding corridors. The city’s plans for the site include a “twenty-first century employment district” that would revitalize Cherry Avenue as a unifying corridor.
While the pending sale between Boeing and Goodman is a deal between two private companies, any future development plans and possible rezoning requirements would have to be approved by the city’s Planning Commission, said Councilwoman Stacy Mungo, whose 5th District includes the site.
Mungo said Goodman has been advised of the Globemaster Plan and will hopefully consider community and city input on the development.
“I know our city staff has been communicating with potential buyers on the vision and what we’ve heard from our residents,” she said. “Our hope is that whoever eventually owns the property will be required to go through a community process, and we look forward to working with them.”
Mungo said she foresees a commercial/industrial area similar to other new developments in the city.
“I foresee a use that has lots of diversity, similar to Douglas Park and Long Beach Exchange,” she said.
Mungo said the property, one of the largest parcels of its kind in the region, has received major interest from developers.
The news was a disappointment for United Parcel Service, which had bid earlier this year to build a regional service hub at the site that could have brought about 2,500 jobs to the city, UPS spokesman Bruce MacRae said Friday.
MacRae said the shipping giant is now looking for locations outside of Long Beach.
—Staff writers Stephanie Rivera and Tim Grobaty contributed to this report.
Editor’s note: this story was updated Saturday morning with information on Goodman’s projects outside of the United States.