The new management team overseeing Banning Ranch, one of Orange County’s last stretches of largely undeveloped coastal land, plans to step up its “visibility” in 2008 as the team considers potential housing and retail development on the land, or an outright sale of the property.
Early stage development plans for the 403-acre stretch of land that runs alongside Pacific Coast Highway, from the city line of Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, are expected to be filed in the first half of the year.
Current plans by Newport Banning Ranch LLC call for up to 1,375 homes, 75,000 square feet of shops and a 75-room boutique hotel to be built on a maze of land near the Santa Ana River that’s been used for oil production operations for more than 50 years.
At least half the land, a longtime property of Bakersfield-based Aera Energy LLC, one of California’s biggest oil and gas producers, would remain open space if development goes forward, say officials from the developer.
At the same time, executives overseeing the land plan to step up discussions with the city of Newport Beach to see if an outright sale of the land to the city or other state agencies–which would likely keep the environmentally sensitive area as 100% open space–is viable.
For more on this story, see the Jan. 28 issue of the Business Journal.
