Buena Park Golf Site Gives Way to Homes
By MATHEW PADILLA
In the drive for housing in North County, a golf course and driving range is giving way to homes and a shopping center.
Western Pacific Housing, part of Arlington, Texas-based D.R. Horton Inc., has bought the former Big Tee Golf Center in Buena Park and plans to convert the 26.5-acre site on Beach Boulevard into 150 homes and shops.
The project is small by the standards of South County’s big housing developments. But in land-tight North County, the deal is one of the year’s biggest land buys for housing. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
The deal shows how homebuilders are getting more aggressive, jumping at the chance to buy sites they might have overlooked five or 10 years ago.
The land is at the corner of Beach and La Mirada boulevards, on Buena Park’s border with Fullerton and La Mirada in Los Angeles County. A local family sold the land to Western.
The site has some challenges. It faces Beach, a major thoroughfare, and there’s a car wash at the corner of La Mirada.
Along with homes, Western plans a 27,000-square-foot shopping center at the site. The homebuilder hopes to lure tenants such as a family restaurant, pharmacy, cafe and bank to the center, said Chris Chambers, president of Western’s OC and Inland Empire division based in Irvine.
Western plans to build two-story homes ranging from 2,300 to 2,700 square feet and selling for around $500,000, Chambers said.
The builder also plans a community pool, hot tub, recreation center, park and walking and biking trails. Western has named the development Edgebrook because a creek once dissected it.
Several homebuilders are doing smaller infill projects in already developed areas as the number of big masterplanned communities shrinks.
D.R. Horton is working on a similar project in Anaheim Hills called Canyon Oaks. A big shopping center had been planned for the 19-acre site near the Riverside (91) Freeway. But now D.R. Horton is building 106 homes there after neighbors opposed more shopping.
The Anaheim Hills and Buena Park projects are big by North County standards.
The area’s biggest development under way is Yorba Linda’s Vista Del Verde, which calls for 2,000 homes. Fullerton’s Amerige Heights is next at about 1,450 homes. But those projects are rarities.
Chambers called Edgebrook “definitely on the larger end of new development.”
Western has built homes in already developed areas of Stanton and Westminster and now is building in Garden Grove as well as Anaheim. Western’s projects in developed areas tend to range from 35 to 60 homes, Chambers said.
In June, Western held a groundbreaking for a new Anaheim project, dubbed Founder’s Square. Plans call for 63 two-story homes on eight acres. The homes, from 2,300 to 2,600 square feet, are expected to cost around $500,000.
Founder’s Square is in the middle of a developed area of west Anaheim on Gilbert Street south of the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway. The site is across the street from low-rise office buildings on one side and older one-story homes.
North County is starved for new homes, according to Jeff Meyers, who heads Costa Mesa-based The Meyers Group, a real estate consulting firm.
New homes in North County sell at a premium of 10% to 30% above older homes as a result of their limited supply, Meyers said.
In the early 1990s, newer homes often sold for less than comparable older ones because of the added costs of new home ownership, such as landscaping and homeowner association fees, sources said.
Buyers of new homes in developed areas “will put up with a little more traffic noise” in exchange for proximity to shops and services, Myers said.
Western is pursuing a dual strategy of infill projects in North County and bigger developments in Riverside County, where land is plentiful, Chambers said.
Western’s Irvine-based division builds about 1,000 homes a year, with about a third being infill projects.
