Irvine to Consider Residential Project for Spectrum Space
By MATHEW PADILLA
The city of Irvine is set to decide this month whether to make a big change to its signature commercial hub by allowing apartments at the Irvine Spectrum.
Irvine’s Planning Commission and City Council both are prepping for August votes on rezoning commercial space to allow 1,550 residential units across from the Spectrum’s retail center at the southwest corner of Alton Parkway and Irvine Center Drive.
The change was initiated by the city, which hopes to increase the housing supply and turn the Spectrum into a mixed-use development of commercial, retail and residential space.
The county’s imbalance between jobs and housing is creating intense demand for more residential units, said Brian Fisk, Irvine’s manager of planning services.
In June, Orange County’s median home price hit a record $414,000, up 15% from the same month a year ago, according to market tracker DataQuick Information Systems.
Median prices in Irvine vary by ZIP code from $357,000 to $496,000. Prices in the city are up anywhere from 10% to 33%.
Newport Beach-based The Irvine Company, which owns the land, doesn’t plan to develop homes or condominiums for sale at the site, according to company spokesperson Jennifer Hieger.
She said the company most likely would build apartments similar to its Villa Siena apartment complex at Jamboree Road and Campus Drive.
Villa Siena is in the heart of the Irvine Business Complex near John Wayne Airport.
“The Irvine Spectrum is a thriving job center,” Hieger said.
Developing apartments in the Spectrum “would allow people to live closer to where they work,” she said.
The city is set to rezone 34 acres within a triangle boarded by the Santa Ana (I-5), San Diego (I-405) and Laguna (133) freeways.
Density would be about 45 units to an acre on the site.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity to put housing in a higher density configuration,” said Richard Gollis, a principal with real estate consultant Newport Beach-based The Concord Group.
“It’s geographically in the dead center of the county,” he said.
Gollis said the site’s proximity to the Metrolink station at the Irvine Transpor-tation Center on Barranca Parkway is another plus.
Irvine has scaled back initial plans for the site. In 2001, Irvine was considering 2,500 homes on 514 acres.
Rezoning part of the Spectrum from commercial to residential is part of a countywide trend amid low office rents and high vacancies.
The Spectrum’s office vacancy rate is about 23%, according to CB Richard Ellis Inc.
Shea Properties, a unit of Walnut-based J.F. Shea Co., and the Irvine office of Opus West Corp. both are rezoning commercial space to residential in OC.
The developers want to build homes and apartments.
