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Makar Aims to Fill in PCH, Lure Trendy, Offbeat Retailers

A stroll down Main Street in Huntington Beach is fun, but it’s over almost as soon as it begins.

The street’s trademark surfwear shops and coffeehouses make up just a brief half-mile stretch alongside Pacific Coast Highway.

Paul Makarechian, a boyish-faced developer with enthusiasm to spare, wants to expand Surf City’s downtown by turning a 31-acre dirt lot near Main Street into parks, shops, restaurants, a hotel and 516 condominiums.

The development, dubbed Pacific City, would fill a downtown void by linking Main Street with the area’s big hotels: the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort & Spa and the Hilton Waterfront Beach Resort.

The aim, according to Makarechian, is to expand the areas where people can mosey.

What’s more, 30-year-old Makarechian said he sees his project as having something that is lacking at most places where people go to eat or shop in Orange County: verve.

The plan is to lure eclectic boutique shops and spurn big restaurant chains, he said.

Makarechian said his aim is to create something “incredibly stylish.”

“There’s a void in the county of that kind of energy,” Makarechian said from his Newport Beach office.

Makarechian heads Makar Properties LLC, developer of the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort & Spa in Dana Point and owner of several office buildings and a large landholding in Colorado.

In June, Makar got approval from Huntington Beach’s City Council for the basic outline of the $500 million Pacific City project.

Newport Beach-based Capital Pacific Holdings Inc., run by Paul’s father Hadi Makarechian, bought the land for $28 million in 1998. Makar took possession in 2001 as part of an equity buyout of homebuilder Capital Pacific’s commercial arm.

For now, ChevronTexaco Corp. is clearing the land of contamination from years of oil pumping. Makar plans to start building in October. The first shops and condos are set for 2007.

Makarechian has location on his side,namely the Pacific Ocean. He has hired Irvine-based architect McLarand Vasquez Emsiek & Partners Inc. to detail his lofty vision.

The project is a bid to bring a bit of panache to Huntington Beach, which has seen a revival in recent years but still sits somewhere between ratty beach town and coastal chic.






Rendering of Pacific City shops: could see jazz club

McLarand Vasquez is working on other contemporary projects locally, including planned high-rise condominium towers in Irvine being developed by Phoenix-based Opus West Corp. and Scottsdale-based Geoffrey H. Edmunds & Associates Inc.

Huntington Beach dictates Mediterranean-style architecture along the coast. Shops and houses in and around Main Street display terracotta tiles and stucco walls painted in beige, pink and white. Not exactly cutting edge stuff.

Makarechian has discussed his plans with Shaheen Sadeghi, developer of funky shopping centers The Lab and The Camp in Costa Mesa.

“He’s a young guy, he’s well-financed, and he gets it,” Sadeghi said of Makarechian. “I’m hoping he will take advantage of the opportunity and do something different.”

Other developers haven’t made the most of coastal land here, building strip malls and relying on national retailers, according to Sadeghi.

“People are not going to drive halfway down PCH to go to The Gap,” he said.

The county faces a crisis of homogeneity, according to Sadeghi.

“Sometimes I get the feeling that there are people in the county that walk around with a bleach sprayer and bleach anything that is new,” he said.

Pacific City is designed around a saucer-shaped cobblestone street. Small parks and fountains dot the development. Restaurants, shops and a hotel are set right off Pacific Coast Highway, with condos behind them.

The project is set to be split by Pacific View Avenue, which now passes behind the Hyatt and the Hilton and then ends when reaching the dirt lot that is slated to become Pacific City.

An expanded Pacific View Avenue is what stands to link the waterfront hotels with Main Street. Pacific View should be narrow and bordered by wide sidewalks as it passes through Pacific City, according to Makarechian.

Hotel visitors are sure to be drawn to Pacific City and on to Main, he said.

“You’ll be entertained the whole way through,” Makarechian said.

Pacific City was the original name of Huntington Beach given by Philip A. Stanton in 1901. A syndicate headed by Stanton bought 1,500 acres around Main Street for $100,000, with visions of forming a resort town to rival Atlantic City.

But Stanton later sold the land to another investor group headed by Pacific Electric Railway magnate Henry E. Huntington, who promptly named the area after himself. He built the pier and extended the railway line from Long Beach.

Huntington Beach officials back the Pacific City plan.

Pacific City “has expanded the traditional definition of Mediterranean architecture,” City Planning Director Howard Zelefsky said.

The condo designs feature eclectic elements, and the hotel is set to be a unique boutique facility, he said.

Concerns raised by residents near the project over contamination and traffic have been resolved, he said. They never sued, according to Zelefsky.

“The city and developer and residents want the same thing,” he said. “They want clean soil.”

The city’s fire department has hired an outside consultant to ensure the soil is entirely cleaned up, he said.

One idea being tossed around for Pacific City is live entertainment, such as a jazz club, according to Zelefsky.

“We don’t have many live entertainment venues and none downtown,” he said.

Makarechian said he is confident that he can lure offbeat, yet swank Asian eateries popular in Los Angeles, like Sushi Roku or its offshoot Katana.

Those kinds of restaurants wouldn’t be caught dead in one of OC’s malls, because “it would almost take away from their brand,” he said. n

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