The status of development at Lennar Corp.’s Central Park West development in Irvine has been a barometer of sorts for Orange County’s homebuilding industry over the past 10 years.
The 43-acre project, a one-time site of a Parker Hannifin Corp. industrial facility, has seen its share of ups and downs since 2004. That’s when Miami-based Lennar paid a reported $100 million for a majority stake in the property in one of largest land deals of the last housing boom.
The boom turned to bust before sales began in earnest.
Development has proceeded in pieces since then.
The good news: Construction again is in full force at Central Park West, with work on several dozen homes moving ahead since the start of the year.
Set for Spring
Sales at a trio of new townhome projects—the first new construction at the development in a couple years—are expected to begin in spring to go along with one existing site at Central Park West that still has unsold homes, according to Lennar.
The homes at the three new projects—dubbed Madison, Soho, and Manhattans—will run from about 1,300 square feet to about 2,300 square feet. The projects will include about 176 homes upon their completion, according to Lennar.
A grand opening for the new models is slated for late April, according to the homebuilder’s website.
Sale prices for the new homes haven’t been announced yet. Flats at the one existing product still selling at Central Park West, called Lennox, are priced from between $577,000 and $931,000, and run as large as 2,500 square feet, according to Lennar.
Construction and sales at Central Park West has been an on-again, off-again affair for much of the past six years.
IBC
The project—located along the San Diego (405) Freeway, less than a mile from John Wayne Airport—was envisioned as the first urban masterplanned community located in the Irvine Business Complex, the largely commercial area surrounding the airport.
Some 40 projects envisioned for the IBC could ultimately bring nearly 14,000 residences to the area. Central Park West still is the only large-scale IBC project offering for-sale homes, as other developers in the area have opted to focus their efforts on apartments.
Expectations
Central Park West was expected to hold about 1,380 homes upon build out. About half that number has been built.
The first 500 townhomes and flats at the project were mothballed in mid-construction in late 2007, amid the rough housing and mortgage markets. Only a few sales had been made prior to that decision.
Company officials said at the time that they preferred postponing sales rather than offload the homes at steep discounts.
The mothballing strategy didn’t apply for Astoria, the two-building condominium project of about 240 units built in the back corner of the development, along the freeway.
Astoria opened in 2009, but failed to generate much sales momentum. It was turned into an upscale, for-rent project by 2011. Apartments at the complex now count monthly rents starting around $3,000 for one-bedroom units, to more than $9,000 a month for some of the penthouses.
Lennar resumed home sales for the remainder at Central Park West in 2010, amid signs of an improving housing market, particularly on the Irvine Ranch.
Reboot
The company aimed more for affordability in its initial sales efforts after hitting the reboot button at Central Park West.
Condos offered for sale in 2010 started in the upper $300,000s, with prices for more upscale townhomes and luxury flats starting in the low- to mid-$600,000 range.
Pricing appears to have moved up amid the latest batch of homes offered at the project by Lennar, which ranked as OC’s ninth-largest homebuilder by sales last year, as well as the area’s second-largest seller of attached homes (see list, page 28). Lennar counted 68 sales last year, all of them attached homes, according to this week’s list.
Central Park West still has some additional phases of homes and commercial centers in its plans. Those include a 19,700-square-foot neighborhood retail center, as well as a four-story office complex that could run about 90,000 square feet.
No timetable has been announced for construction of the non-housing components at the development.
