Canada’s Bosa Development Corp. jump-started Orange County’s high-rise condominium building boom, daring to push upward at time when most developers still were thinking horizontally.
Now Bosa’s towers,the first started and first set to be done,are the model, local developers said.
After all, “the Bosa experiment was an experiment,” said Rich Knowland, regional vice president for Lennar Corp., which plans towers in Anaheim and across from Bosa in Irvine.
Bosa’s Marquee towers near John Wayne Airport have 232 units that are almost done. From a marketing perspective, the project has been a hit,the condos were sold before construction began.
Design issues for the futuristic-looking Bosa towers,condo sizes and layouts, amenities and the look of the lobby,have been studied.
Bosa has plans for four more condo towers at Park Place, totaling 566 units.
Construction should begin on the second group of towers this summer and should finish in two phases.
Bosa, headed by Nat Bosa of Vancouver, British Columbia, realized there was demand for larger condos and more bedrooms.
The next project will see condos with more space than the Marquee, including some three-bedroom units, said Dennis Serraglio, Bosa’s director of sales and marketing.
Of course, rival developers have studied prices at the Marquee towers.
The condo units for Bosa’s project, which are about 1,200 square feet, sold for around $550 per square foot. That put typical properties in the mid $600,000s.
Some condos already are being resold by speculative investors, at close to $850 per square foot.
“Bosa left a lot of money on the table,” Lennar’s Knowland said at a real estate conference late last month at the University of California, Irvine, put on by Cresa Partners LLC.
Bosa took more of a gamble, betting,but not knowing for sure,that OC was ready for condo towers.
Lennar plans to play it differently.
“Our plan is to hold off sales a little longer, so people can see what they’re getting,” Knowland said. “This also means there should be a shorter waiting list (for condos).”
With the housing market showing some cooling, fewer speculators are expected to buy up Lennar’s condos, Knowland said.
Adding Up Infill
Infill housing projects potentially could add as many as 131,500 homes to OC. Much of those homes will replace existing development, according to a new study.
Statewide, there are some 500,000 potential infill sites on 220,000 acres. About three quarters of those sites are in Southern California, according to a report commissioned by Sunne Wright McPeak, secretary of the state’s Business, Transportation and Hous-ing Agency.
All the state’s infill sites could yield up to 4 million homes. Of the infill sites identified, 71% are classified as “refill,” where there already are homes or other buildings on them. Only 29% of the sites are vacant.
It’s even harder to find excess land in OC, the report said. Less than 8% of potential infill sites in OC’s most densely populated areas are vacant.
Among cities, Santa Ana offers the fifth largest number of potential infill sites in Southern California. Anaheim is ninth.
“Vacant land has long been at a premium in Orange County, and this is extremely true for infill sites,” according to the study, done by John Landis of the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at the University of California, Berkeley.
About a quarter of California’s demand for housing in the next 20 years could be met by infill development, the study said.
The Irvine Company has spent close to a billion dollars buying up prime San Diego office buildings in the past few years.
Now the Newport Beach-based company has added two executives from JMI Realty to oversee its buildings there.
Charles Black, former president of the San Diego Padres and leader of the JMI Realty development team that created the Padres’ new ballpark, has been hired as the Irvine Co.’s senior vice president of the San Diego region.
Black will be responsible for coordinating the company’s business in the city.
Another former JMI Realty executive, Thomas Sullivan, now is vice president of development for San Diego. Sullivan managed the design and construction of local landmarks such as the Omni Hotel and Metropolitan Condominiums. He previously ran his own consulting firm.
Sullivan will oversee spending on Irvine Co. buildings, as well as any new construction.
In other Irvine Co. news, the company was said to be in the running for a big contract to redevelop the San Diego’s Navy Broadway Complex, a 14-acre site that could hold about 1.5 million square feet of office space and hotels. The contract ended up going to Manchester Financial Group of San Diego last week.
