A national apartment owner with plenty of familiarity with Huntington Beach has signed on to that city’s Pacific City mixed-use development.
Highlands Ranch, Colo.-based UDR Inc., one of the country’s largest apartment owners, recently took over ownership of the multifamily portion of Pacific City, the 31-acre project south of the Huntington Beach Pier on Pacific Coast Highway.
UDR bought the land that’s slated to hold about 516 apartments from Miami-based Crescent Heights about a month ago, according to property records.
A sale price for the land wasn’t immediately disclosed.
The site adds to a growing Huntington Beach presence for UDR, which owned 13 communities in OC as of last year and had a development portfolio in the county valued at $288 million.
Recent projects that UDR has taken up in Surf City include the Residences at Bella Terra, a 467-unit complex the company opened last year. It recently valued the complex near the Bella Terra shopping center at nearly $150 million.
This summer, UDR plans to begin preleasing for Beach + Ocean, a 173-unit complex on Beach Boulevard. The company paid close to $13 million for the land for that project—previously called Beach Walk—and expected the development to cost a little more than $50 million, according to regulatory filings.
UDR has “a proven track record of moving projects along expeditiously,” according to a recent letter from City Manager Fred Wilson to the city council.
The land sale to UDR appears to remove Crescent Heights from the Pacific City project a little more than two years after the master developer bought the then-financially distressed project for a reported $52.5 million—the first and only OC investment the company’s known to have made.
Crescent Heights has already sold land that will hold the retail portion of the development to San Jose-based DJM Capital Partners Inc., the owner of the Bella Terra shopping center, as well as the land that will hold the hotel portion of the project.
A partnership between R.D. Olson and Pacific Hospitality Group, both of Irvine, is now handling the hotel project.
Pacific City, in addition to apartments, is slated to have about 191,100 square feet of retail development and an eight-story hotel.
Shea Sale
Shea Properties has sold one of three remaining buildings it owns at Town Center Corporate Park, an office complex in its hometown of Aliso Viejo.
Intercap Lending, a mortgage company previously based in Irvine, bought the 53,115-square-foot office building at 26880 Aliso Viejo Parkway.
The office, at Aliso Viejo Parkway and Pacific Park, sold for approximately $9.5 million, or about $179 per square foot.
Newmark Grubb Knight Frank brokers Doug Mathews and Gary Allen, along with PM Realty Group’s Tim Joyce, arranged the sale on behalf of Shea.
“We chose the Aliso Viejo location for many reasons,” said Ron Harsini, chairman of Intercap, “but mainly because of the easy access to the toll roads for our employees and the wide range of amenities, including food and entertainment options” in the area.
The lender will occupy a bulk of the space at the multitenant building, which is fully leased, according to CoStar Group Inc. data.
Shea Regional Vice President Brian Meihaus said it sold the office, one of five buildings at Town Center Corporate Park, as part of “a selective and disciplined sales program within its portfolio.”
“The goal of this program is to create a balanced portfolio of office, industrial, retail and multifamily assets,” Meihaus said.
Q-Logic Corp., which is headquartered nearby, bought another building at Town Center Corporate Park last year. Shea built the complex in 2000 and is looking to sell two other buildings it owns at the campus that total about 73,000 square feet combined.
