Real Estate
by Nidal Ibrahim
RESIDENTIAL
Jeff Meyers is joining the development game.
Meyers, who founded and built Meyers Group real estate market research service into a national brand before selling it to Hanley Wood publishing last June for an undisclosed sum, has completed his first buy in Arizona.
St. Clair Meyers LLC, the new firm 46-year-old Meyers started with longtime developer Steve St. Clair, formerly of St. Clair Cos.,paid an unspecified sum for 500 acres west of Phoenix.
The Silverock masterplanned community is approved for 2,100 homes.
The move represents something of a comeback for Meyers. An entrepreneur who launched Meyers Group out of his garage when he was 25, Meyers said he voluntarily left Hanley Wood in January, even though he had a one-year contract after selling.
“I’d never worked for anybody in the 20 years I’ve been in business,” Meyers said. “I founded the business and had always worked for myself.”
The decision to go into development partly was based on a desire to have his own business again.
“I have a non-compete,” with Hanley Wood, he said. “I think 20 years is enough of being in data and consulting. So now I’m pretty focused on land development.”
Meyers started his new firm with St. Clair in February, shortly after leaving Hanley Wood. The duo recently completed their buy in Buckeye, Ariz.
Sales to homebuilders of the first of the 2,100 lots are expected to start in six to eight months, Meyers said. He’s confident the hot Arizona real estate market will remain so, he said.
“When Steve and I came together we were looking at where are the best housing markets, and Phoenix is No. 1,” Meyers said.
The project is in the West Valley region, about 30 miles outside Phoenix on the Interstate 10 corridor.
“I’ve always had an interest in both homebuilding and land development,” Meyers said. “I’ve always thought the development side is exciting. It’s a fairly risky and capital intensive. But it also comes with some pretty good upside.”
Irvine-based St. Clair Meyers also has projects in Anaheim, Beaumont and Norco, which mostly consist of land St. Clair bought under St. Clair Cos. banner. That appealed to Meyers, he said.
“Steve’s been in business for 10 years and he developed about 8,000 lots,” Meyers said. “I didn’t want to start from scratch. I wanted to get involved in a business already in place so we can do large deals right away.”
The company plans to focus on California, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado.
So what does Meyers, a longtime observer of the housing markets across the country, make of Southern California?
“Southern California makes me nervous,” he said, pointing to affordability, skyrocketing prices and liberal lending policies by mortgage companies.
“I’m not calling it a bubble per se,” he said. “I just think the market could be at risk just because our prices have gone up so high for so long. But we still have strong job growth, which is why I don’t see a bubble. I just see (price appreciation) flattening out.”
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Lake Forest-based PGP Partners Inc. plans to develop 500,000 square feet of office space in Ontario in a $100 million project that could see four buildings go up around Ontario International Airport.
PGP Partners managing partner J.R. Wetzel said his company is planning two four-story and two six-story buildings on a roughly 28-acre site between Turner and Archibald avenues south of the Interstate 10.
A hotel and restaurants also are possibilities for the project, which is dubbed Ontario Airport Towers. PGP Partners bought the land in April.
Wetzel, whose Orange County roots trace back to property management with the O’Donnell Group before moving on to Newport Beach-based Pacific Gulf Properties, launched PGP Partners with partner Robert Dewey in 2000.
Wetzel is familiar with commercial real estate in the Inland Empire, having been involved in the development of roughly 9 million square feet of space in the region since 1989. Now he said he believes the time is right for some new office space.
“What’s changed is it was almost all industrial,” Wetzel said. “But with the higher-end housing and retail and the growth of more white collar jobs, we now see it as a time that it makes sense for office.”
The office complex isn’t the only project PGP Partners has in the Inland Empire. The company recently bought a 16-acre site in Mira Loma, where it plans to develop four industrial buildings ranging in size from 28,000 square feet to 89,000 square feet.
The light industrial structures will be developed and sold, Wetzel said.
Other deals include one in Santa Fe Springs, just north of Orange County, where light industrial buildings also are planned.
PGP Partners plans to keep looking for projects in OC, Wetzel said. But it’s increasingly difficult, given the competition, he said.
“If you want to develop … for the most part you have to go to Ontario and beyond and today you even have to go to Redlands and beyond because the Ontario Airport area is almost like an infill market today,” he said.
PGP Partners, which is partnered with RREEF Funds LLC on the Ontario Airport office project, also is working on several deals in the Las Vegas market.
Ibrahim, publisher of Arab-American Business, is filling in for real estate reporter Mathew Padilla, who’s been on vacation and returns to the column next week.
