Santa Ana voters signed off on Michael Harrah’s plans for a massive office tower between downtown and the Civic Center on Tuesday.
Now comes the hard part.
Harrah, owner and president of Santa Ana-based Caribou Industries Inc., now has to line up tenants and financing for the prosposed 37-story, 493-foot-high office building.
The tower, dubbed One Broadway Plaza, would be Orange County’s largest building.
Before construction can start, Harrah needs to lease half of the building in order to get financing. SBC Communications Inc. is said to be interested in taking space at One Broadway Plaza. So is a big software maker, according to Harrah.
The challenge is luring office dwellers to a reviving Santa Ana, instead of Irvine, the county’s office hub. Harrah also will have to be leery of luring tenants to the tower from other buildings he owns, creating big holes to fill elsewhere.
A lawsuit challenging the city’s environmental work on the project still is pending. Measure A, as the tower initiative was known, passed with 56% of the vote.
The tower would be Harrah’s crowning achievement in Santa Ana. The burly developer owns some 3 million square feet of space. Almost single handidly, Harrah has revived Santa Ana by restoring old buildings and filling up office buildings.
