At Home Group Inc., a Plano, Texas-based big-box home furnishings retailer that’s on an ambitious growth kick across the U.S., has inked a sizeable deal in Tustin for its second Orange County location.
The $2.4 billion-valued firm (NYSE: HOME) recently signed a nearly 105,000-square-foot lease for an empty retail property at the intersection of El Camino Real and Tustin Ranch Road.
At Home’s new location marks the largest retail lease in Orange County since the start of 2020, not counting renewals, according to data from real estate market tracker CoStar Group Inc.
The property, just north of the Santa Ana (5) Freeway and a few blocks from the Tustin and Irvine city line, is part of a shopping center that holds a Costco and a few smaller tenants. The site is across the street from the Tustin AutoCenter.
The vacant site where At Home will be moving into last held grocer Ansar Gallery. That space has been shuttered for over a year. Prior to that, it was home to a Kmart.
A smaller auto service site connected to the former grocery store also appears to be part of the new At Home location. Demolition work at the site was underway last week.
A time frame for the new location opening hasn’t been disclosed. Texas-based Parkway Construction & Associates is the contractor.
Financial terms of the 11-year lease weren’t disclosed. The landlord, which CoStar records indicate is a Phoenix-based investment manager, was represented by Retail Insite’s Mike Moser and Chris Hodgman.
Foothill Ranch Start
The Tustin location marks a step up in size locally for At Home, whose other area location in Foothill Ranch runs about 85,000 square feet. That site, at the Foothill Ranch Towne Center, opened about two years ago.
The retailer—which sells over 50,000 home décor items, including furniture, rugs, wall art and patio items—currently counts four locations in Southern California, and had 227 locations in total as of last month.
Executives at the firm, which has a stated goal of reaching 600 locations, see the state as a significant source of potential growth.
“I feel great about our pipeline; I’m confident in our 600+ store potential in so many markets where we [are] just starting, quite frankly. California has just a few stores we can get to over 90 stores there,” Chairman and CEO Lewis Bird said in March, during the company’s latest earnings call with analysts.
“We can be very flexible. The pandemic is creating winners and losers out there,” Lewis said. “We’ve been emerging stronger and better positioned in taking [market] share. Others are closing the door,” he said. “We’re really the only national retailer interested in boxes this size, so people call us first.”
The company’s average store size is just over 100,000 square feet. It opened 77 stores the past three years.
At Home reported first year annual sales of nearly $6.2 million for new store sites which are leased or purchased by the company, and $7.9 million of annual sales for ground-up, newly build stores, according to its latest annual report.
Furniture Hub
The forthcoming At Home site is located not far from one of OC’s largest shopping centers, the Irvine Co.’s Market Place, which straddles Tustin and Irvine along Jamboree Road.
Another home furnishing retailer, Mathis Brothers Furniture, opened its first area location there at the start of 2020. At nearly 160,000 square feet, it was the largest retail lease reported in OC in some five years when it was struck in 2019.
