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Lennar Courting Anaheim’s Top Restaurants

Homebuilder Lennar Corp. is courting two legendary Anaheim restaurants to move to the city’s Platinum Triangle redevelopment area.

The wooing is part of Lennar’s effort to build an urban enclave of condominium towers, shops and fine restaurants around Angel Stadium of Anaheim.

Lennar is talking with Mr. Stox and the Anaheim White House, the city’s most regarded restaurants, among others.

“We are in exploratory talks,” said Anaheim White House owner Bruno Serato, who bought the landmark restaurant in 1987.

Serato said the White House, based in a stately former mansion on Anaheim Boulevard, could open a second “chic casual” eatery for the date-crowd at Lennar’s project, dubbed A-Town.

Also on the table: moving from the White House’s current spot, where notables from President Jimmy Carter to Madonna have eaten through the years.






A-Town rendering: luring top restaurants, shops is key

“Foot traffic is what a restaurant needs,” Serato said. “There’s none here.”

The White House is nestled in a Hispanic section of Anaheim. Most diners seek out the restaurant, which also draws tourists and conventioneers from the nearby Disneyland Resort.

The restaurant offers limousine and shuttle service to hotels.

Ron Marshall, co-owner of Mr. Stox, said he has been in touch with Lennar about moving to A-Town. The hitch: a sale of the restaurant’s current Katella Avenue site, which Marshall owns.

That hinges on rezoning for the site, Marshall said. That could take years to resolve.

Mr. Stox’s site is zoned for office space with an exception for the restaurant. But if the zoning were to change to allow for high-density housing, Marshall said he’d be more than likely to sell and move to A-Town.

Lennar and others have paid top dollar for industrial and other properties to make way for high-rise condos.

Marshall said he estimates his property could fetch upward of $10 million if rezoned for housing, instead of half that under current zoning.

Like the White House, Mr. Stox also is a little out of place with its surroundings. In its case, the restaurant is in a largely industrial area.

“It’s exciting to be here,” Marshall said. “But one of our major complaints when we bought here was that there were no homes and we had to rely on the convention business.”

Marshall’s family has owned the restaurant since 1977.

The white-linen restaurant boasts a 25,000-bottle wine cellar, one of the largest in Southern California.

There are other restaurants in talks with Lennar. So far, the only one to announce plans to move is The Catch near Angel Stadium.

Even that deal isn’t sealed, according to Richard Knowland, a regional vice president in Aliso Viejo for Miami-based Lennar.

The Catch co-owner Joe Manzella, who didn’t return calls, has tentative plans to briefly shut down sometime in the next year.

Piggybacking on Lennar, San Francisco’s AMB Property Corp. wants to build 509 condominiums where The Catch is now.

AMB recently bought out the remaining 20 years on the restaurant’s lease and took control of parking spaces on the lot for stadium events.

Lennar’s Knowland said Manzella is in talks with the developer to move to a 13.5-acre section of A-Town. In all, the development is 54 acres with plans for high-rise towers overlooking Angel Stadium and more than 48,600 square feet of shops and restaurants.

Lennar made a behind-the-scenes offer to buy the AMB land where The Catch is on State College Boulevard, Knowland said. If approved, Lennar could keep The Catch there, he said.

“If we did buy it, we’d certainly explore that and integrate it into the urban neighborhood,” he said. “What he wants is exactly what we want,” Knowland said of Manzella. “We’re on the same page.”

Margan S. Mitchell, a spokeswoman with AMB, declined to elaborate on the company’s plans for the site.

“We are in the process of redeveloping and selling the land,” Mitchell said.

Luring restaurants to A-Town is a priority for Lennar. The developer is looking to draw an all-star lineup of retailers, restaurants and entertainment to the area.

A-Town might be similar to the kinds of development that have happened in downtown Brea or on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena’s Old Town, Knowland said.

“They run in packs,” he said of retailers and eateries. “They would give you a flavor of what we are looking at.”

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