In one of the top-10 South Coast commercial property sales of the year, Carpinteria-based lynda.com announced Tuesday it has purchased the 57,474-square-foot former Salvation Army buildings at 6410 Cindy Lane for $6 million.

It is the largest commercial sale of the year in Carpinteria, Hayes Commercial Group officials said. The Lavender Court property was a larger transaction, but is mostly a residential development, officials said. Lynda.com is one of only 22 that fill more than 50,000 square feet of office space on the South Coast.

“We’re confident that this purchase will benefit not only the business, but the community, our employees, and ultimately our members,” Lynda Weinman, co-founder of lynda.com, said in a news release. “Creating a consolidated lynda.com campus with expanded, customized workspace literally allows us to have more room for creating an even more constructive educational experience for our members.”

Lynda.com produces CD- and DVD-based products, but much of its revenue is generated from online subscriptions, which allow members to access its library of more than 53,000 educational videos 24 hours a day from computers or iPhones. The site has been online for 15 years, and has expanded during the past three years, despite the sour economy. The privately held company has grown more than 40 percent in revenue in that period.

Although detailed plans for the property were not immediately announced, the company probably will remodel the office building for use as offices to capitalize on the ocean views and update the warehouse building for a live-action recording studio for its online training videos, lynda.com officials said. Click here for a Hayes Commercial Group PDF of the property.

When lynda.com began moving its headquarters to Carpinteria from Ventura last year, few would have predicted the effect the company would have on the South Coast economy. Along with adding 73 jobs since April 2009, lynda.com leased nearly 60,000 square feet of office and research and development space in Carpinteria.

“Acquisition of the property enables lynda.com to better plan their current growth and future expansion needs while securing their future real estate needs in Carpinteria,” said Hayes’ Christos Celmayster, who has represented lynda.com from the outset, handling all of its leasing since the company migrated north into Santa Barbara County.

Weinman was recognized as the 2010 Entrepreneur of Year by the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara at the annual South Coast Business & Technology Awards earlier this summer.

The existing buildings at 6410 Cindy Lane were built in the mid-1970s on 3.52 acres and housed corporate offices for Sambo’s Restaurants, which was a NYSE-traded company with the largest chain of company-owned restaurants in the world.

In 1987, the Salvation Army purchased the property and adapted the office building for use as a rehabilitation facility, while using the warehouse building for donation processing. After closing the rehabilitation facility and scaling back its use of the warehouse, the Salvation Army put the property on the market for sale last year.

The seller’s broker in the deal were Bob Tuler, Paul Gamberdella and Gene Deering from Radius Group and Michael Slater and Tom Dwyer from CB Richard Ellis.

— Noozhawk business writer Ray Estrada can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).