Redevelopment of one of Anaheim’s business landmarks,the office and warehouse campus of CKE Restaurants Inc.’s Carl’s Jr.,is set to start this spring.
The Carpinteria-based fast-food company plans a 90,000-square-foot administrative office building at the longtime Carl’s Jr. site alongside the Riverside (91) Freeway.
Construction on the three-story building, one of the first offices to be built in Anaheim in several years, could begin this May.
A shopping center at 80,000 to 90,000 square feet also is being considered for the 17-acre site. A decision on that phase of redevelopment could come in the next six months.
The campus has been home to Carl’s Jr. operations for the past 30 years. Retired founder Carl Karcher and his family own the land. The Karchers plan to have the building put up and then lease it to CKE.
CKE moved its corporate headquarters in 2002 from Anaheim to the Santa Barbara area, where former chief executive and chairman William Foley lives.
The company, which also runs the Hardee’s, Green Burrito and La Salsa restaurant chains, kept a sizable part of its operations in Anaheim after the move, including its finance, accounting and technology departments.
The lease for the new Anaheim building is expected to run for 15 years, keeping part of the restaurant chain at its historic base for the foreseeable future. About 300 CKE employees work at the campus now.
The office building is being designed for about 360 workers.
It is slated for completion by summer 2008, according to Mark Bennett, senior vice president of Newport Beach-based Professional Real Estate Services, a real estate developer and brokerage.
The company, known as Pres, is working as the development consultant for the project. Dean Chandler and Jeffrey Morgan of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s Newport Beach office represented CKE in the transaction.
The office building is set to replace a 103,000-square-foot distribution center that was built in 1978 and is showing its age. The warehouse now takes up about half of the site.
The company’s Anaheim distribution operations and about 200 workers moved to an Ontario facility last year.
Shopping Center
The shopping center is being considered for the land that’s now home to CKE’s current office building, which is set to stay open during the first phase of construction. The existing office building is about 78,000 square feet.
A final decision on the shopping center likely won’t be made until this summer, Bennett said.
The Karcher family, whose matriarch Margaret Karcher died last year, previously considered moving the company off the site altogether, to free up more space for urban-style housing alongside offices and shops.
With the housing slowdown, homes aren’t part of the plan anymore, Bennett said.
“They’re no longer going that route. Housing here looks like it has hit a snag,” he said.
The campus redevelopment is the latest chapter in the history of Carl’s Jr., which got its start in the city in 1945.
Margaret Heinz Karcher was raised there,before the freeway and industrial development,with her 14 brothers and sisters.
Karcher himself opened Carl’s Drive-In Barbeque in Anaheim in 1945, a few years after running hot dog stands in Los Angeles.
According to Karcher’s biography, Carl’s Drive-In moved to the site of the Anaheim campus after the loss of a lease for the company’s original restaurant across the street.
Karcher holds the title of CKE’s chairman emeritus and is a shareholder and nonvoting director.
He’s not actively involved with running the company anymore.
Son Carl L. Karcher is a director. He and other relatives of the founder run restaurants franchised from CKE.
