When Lido House, Newport Beach’s first newly built hotel in a decade, held its grand opening ceremony last month, the property was given a blessing by the Rev. Canon Cindy Evans Voorhees of the neighboring St. James Episcopal Church.
From a development perspective, the immediate area surrounding Lido House—a locale not particularly known for its embrace of commercial construction—has certainly been blessed in the past few years with a variety of new projects helping revitalize the already tourist-friendly area.
The 130-room labor of love by Bob Olson, chief executive of Newport Beach-based R.D. Olson Development, is the largest and priciest of the planned and recently opened commercial and residential projects near the former city hall area on the Balboa Peninsula. Other developments include waterfront office and retail projects and high-end townhomes and condos.
The appeal of the area just south of Coast Highway on Newport Boulevard is obvious, according to Olson, a Newport Beach native whose company spent an estimated $70 million to build Lido House after tearing down the old city hall.
“It’s the heart of the city,” he said at the April 18 ribbon-cutting, which was five years to the day after his firm responded to a request for proposals for the city-owned site, which it occupies under a long-term ground lease.
A hotel development wasn’t the only idea floated, Newport Beach officials noted last month.
But “then Bob came along,” said Mayor Marshall “Duffy” Duffield. Olson modeled it after his own home on Balboa Island with a style echoing both the Newport Beach coast and Cape Cod that he calls “Newport Nautical.”
The hotel plans were “what Newport Beach is all about,” Duffield said.
“We are local. We are Newport Beach,” said Olson of the hotel, which has worked to attract employees from the immediate area to support the property’s local vibe.
The four-story hotel, with a rooftop bar and high-end The Mayor’s Table restaurant, is one of 11 California hotels branded under Marriott’s Autograph Collection of boutique properties.
Adam Beer, most recently with the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina, is general manager. He said he seeks to make the property a hot spot for both locals and visitors.
DJM, Burnham
The Mayor’s Table isn’t the only new area restaurant where getting a table can be a challenge. About a block away, famed sushi restaurant Nobu set up its first Orange County outpost about a year ago in one of the highlights of DJM Capital Partners’ work at Lido Marina Village, where shops and eateries have opened in phases since 2016, the first substantive retail project on the peninsula in well over a decade.
San Jose-based DJM’s project transformed 125,000 square feet of previously underused retail, office and warehouse space into trendy retail and restaurants along the waterfront. Other notable restaurants there include Zinqué and Lido Bottle Works.
Alongside it is a slightly smaller collection of buildings that have been revamped in a similar fashion by Newport Beach-based Burnham USA. Along with retail and restaurants, it includes a recently redone 17,000-square-foot office at 3700 Newport Blvd. Burnham bought the site from DJM two years ago for about $7 million, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
About half the renovated building is listed as available for lease.
Liking the VUE
Ground-up office development—a Peninsula rarity due to a scarcity of available space and neighbors’ aversion to new construction—also recently moved forward.
Late last month, mixed-use development VUE Newport on Newport Boulevard about a third of a mile from Lido House, announced the start of sales for the project’s office component, which has about 22,000 square feet of space in 11 for-sale condominium units overlooking Newport Harbor.
According to Newport Beach-based Redwood West, a boutique brokerage handling the sales, it’s the first ground-up waterfront office in Newport Beach for sale in 28 years.
Prices range from about $1,100 to $1,300 per square foot for units starting at 680 square feet up to 6,400 square feet.
“We are thrilled to bring this offering to market and can confidently say that VUE Newport affords business owners a one-of-a-kind opportunity to own waterfront commercial space,” said Redwood West co-founder Ben Gott.
“Given the barrier to entry for new, ground-up commercial development along this coast, it is likely this opportunity will never be recreated,” said brokerage Managing Director John Pomer.
VUE Newport is being developed by Dallas-based Third Palm Capital, an affiliate of Cayman Islands-based holding company Dart Enterprises. It includes a small amount of retail space and 27 bayfront villas and townhomes.
Tim Smith Group of Coldwell Banker’s Newport Beach office has the listing for the residences, the largest of which is 3,015 square feet. Prices start at about $2.5 million.
Landsea Lands
One more expensive area housing project is on the way: Lido Villas, a 23-unit townhome development next to Lido Marina Village where presales are scheduled to start this summer.
The three-story homes, ranging from 1,716 square feet to 2,289 square feet, are being developed by Irvine-based Landsea Homes, the U.S. arm of China’s Landsea Group.
Landsea paid $25.5 million for the 1.2-acre site late last year in one of the most expensive infill residential land deals per acre reported in OC, according to property records. Pricing hasn’t been announced.
Landsea also has the large Iron Ridge development under way in Lake Forest.
One Church Staying
A unit of Third Palm sold Landsea the Newport Beach site, which is the former home of a Christian Science church.
One area religious property not going the way of redevelopment is Voorhees’ St. James Episcopal Church at 3209 Via Lido.
Controversy surrounded the nearly 40,000-square-foot church site for three years as a sale to developers, including Burnham USA, was considered. A sale never took place, and the church reopened to congregants last month, one more reason locals likely feel the area has been recently blessed.
