RESIDENTIAL
An offshoot of Santa Ana urban housing developer City Ventures LLC has picked up land to build on.
City Ventures—one of the more aggressive buyers of land in Southern California since its 2009 formation —recently started a subsidiary, CV Communities LLC.
While City Ventures targets urban infill projects, Santa Ana’s CV Communities is expected to be more focused on suburban development.
The new unit’s initial focus is on the Inland Empire, as well as communities in the Bay Area and Sacramento regions, according to officials.
The Inland Empire and Sacramento regions have been two of the hardest hit housing markets in the country in the past few years.
The company believes low land prices and smartly planned projects still can succeed in these “opportunity rich” areas, City Ventures Chairman Craig Atkins said.
“We’re contrarian—we definitely think we can make this work,” he said.
CV Communities is headed up by President August Belmont, a former executive at Irvine’s Standard Pacific Corp.
Belmont started out as director of land acquisition for Standard’s Orange County division and later started the company’s Inland Empire division. He helped turn that group into the company’s most profitable division by the mid-2000s, with more than $500 million in yearly revenue.
Last month, CV Communities made its first land purchase, a $6 million deal in Ontario.
The cash deal was for 143 lots and was made with a unit of U.S. Bank, which had got the property through a foreclosure.
More deals are in the works, according to Atkins, whose company announced a $100 million investment from Los Angeles-based asset management firm Ares Management LLC last summer. The two since have partnered on another, undisclosed investment from Ares, officials said.
The goal of City Ventures and CV Communities is to buy more than 10,000 lots for homebuilding in the coming years, according to Belmont.
COMMERCIAL
Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour, a Mission Viejo-based restaurant chain, aims to expand its old-time charm to some new markets.
The company, which is run by Laguna Niguel-based Parlour Enterprises Inc., recently chose retail and office brokers with the Newport Beach office of Santa Ana’s Grubb & Ellis Co. to represent the company in selecting sites and leases for new restaurants.
Farrell’s is looking to Southern California for its initial sites and later plans to look outside the state. It requires 6,500 to 8,000 square feet of space for its restaurants.
The chain got its start in Portland, Ore., in the 1960s and grew to close to 130 restaurants. Nearly all of those ended up closing after a merger in the late 1980s.
Parlour Enterprises opened a Farrell’s at The Shops at Mission Viejo in 2009. It now has two California restaurants serving ice cream, salads, sandwiches and handmade pizzas, among other items.
The restaurants have “become the latest cool date place for high school students and college students,” said Grubb Senior Vice President Ian Brown, who is representing Parlour Enterprises along with fellow brokers Vanessa Brown and Shane Wilder.
Big Deal
A small Yorba Linda shopping center that just traded hands has commanded a big price.
The 5,789-square-foot Town Center Plaza, near Yorba Linda Boulevard and Lakeview Avenue, sold last month for $4.2 million, or about $720 per square foot.
It was the most paid per square foot for a multitenant retail center in Southern California in 2010, according to Jeremy McChesney, senior vice president at Irvine’s Hanley Investment Group. He represented the seller, Los Angeles-based Festival Cos.
The buyer, Tony Nam, was represented by David Sternberg of San Francisco’s Roessler Investment Group.
The shopping center is full and includes a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, GameStop and Panda Express.
Raining Apartments
Laguna Niguel’s Raintree Partners, a real estate investment and development company, has snapped up its eighth apartment complex in the past year with a Bay Area buy.
It recently bought Meadowbrook Apartments, a 125-unit complex in Livermore. The 30-year-old complex sold for $16.7 million, or about $134,000 per apartment.
The seller wasn’t disclosed. Records show the nine-building complex previously being run by Lexington Associates Inc., a Northern California operator of apartments and senior housing projects.
Raintree, formed in 2007, now owns 10 apartment complexes in California. It’s raised $200 million to invest in deals, according to the company.
