The owners of a Costa Mesa apartment complex want to take a new approach to dealing with parking congestion.
Representatives of Coast Apartments, a 65-unit rental complex at 400 Merrimac Way, recently filed an application with Costa Mesa’s planning commission to install mechanical car lifts at their property in order to add more parking spaces.
The 47-year-old property is next to Orange Coast College. It was bought last year by an affiliate of Newport Beach-based Arrimus Capital for $15.5 million, or about $235,000 per unit, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
The installations would boost the number of parking spaces at the complex from 95 to 112 and cost the property’s new owners about $85,500 to install, factoring in the lifts, in addition to related costs, according to the city filings.
The 17 lifts planned for the complex are a little more than 8 feet tall and can hold a vehicle as heavy as 6,000 pounds, according to statements filed on behalf of the apartment property’s owners by Vertical Parking Solutions, an Irvine-based provider of the lifts.
Each is valued at about $4,500, according to Vertical Parking, which has ties to Advanced Real Estate Services Inc. in Irvine, a large apartment owner in the area.
The lift “allows two vehicles to be parked within one parking space” and are powered by a low-voltage electric motor and hydraulic pump that makes limited noise, filings note.
Residents using the lifts would need to be trained on how to use them, according to the filings.
The project would be the first of its kind in Costa Mesa, although filings with the city note that at least one other complex in the vicinity uses the technology.
Park Plaza, a 243-unit apartment complex on West Stevens Avenue in Santa Ana that’s owned by Advanced Real Estate Services, uses the mechanisms.
Santa Ana city officials told their counterparts in Costa Mesa that the lifts there “have been effective and have not created substantial adverse issues or generated resident complaints,” according to planning commission filings.
Coast Apartments is one of a handful of Costa Mesa complexes in the portfolio of Arrimus Capital, a privately held investor whose managing partner is Chris Lee, the son of Koll Co. and Irvine Company executive Ray Wirta.
Wirta is on the advisory board of Arrimus, along with Burnham USA’s Scott Burnham, who also has a family member working at the company.
Orbis in Ontario
Another Arrimus executive, Tom Money, has started an affiliated real estate company called Orbis Real Estate Partners, which recently kicked off its first development.
Newport Beach-based Orbis said this month that it broke ground on a 136,790-square-foot industrial project in Ontario.
The three-building project is being built on 6.3 acres next to the San Bernardino (10) Freeway. Orbis bought the land in April for $3.75 million. The company places a $15.7 million development value on the project.
Two of the three buildings, totaling about 116,000 square feet, have been presold to tire company O’Green Corp. and Paper 360 Inc. for a combined $12.7 million, according to the developer.
The project is called Orbis Business Center and is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year. It was designed by Irvine-based HPA Architecture, with general contracting services provided by KPRS Construction Services in Brea.
Financing for the project was provided by First Bank.
Money started Orbis with Grant Ross, a first vice president with the Los Angeles office of CBRE Group Inc. The developer has one other industrial project in the works in Ontario, according to the company’s website.
