Jacksonville, Fla.-based Regency Realty Group has paid $23.4 million for 41.5-acres of former aerospace property in Fullerton and has broken ground on a proposed retail center there.
Regency acquired the property from Anaheim-based SunCal Cos., which is heading up planning for the 293-acre Amerige Heights masterplanned community at Fullerton’s former Hughes Aircraft Co. complex.
Plans call for the shopping center to open in November, with a Target Greatland,a bigger version of a Target store,serving as the anchor retailer. Target Corp. has agreed to take a 12-acre parcel of land for $7 million to build a 143,000-square-foot store, according to Bill Bauman, retail group senior vice president for Colliers Seeley International Inc., which brokered the SunCal sale. Cushman & Wakefield and Newport Realty Advisors represented Regency.
Other tenants are set to include: Albertsons Inc., which plans to build a 58,000-square-foot supermarket; Barnes & Noble Inc., which is set to open a 24,000-square-feet bookstore; Gap Inc.’s Old Navy, which plans to open a 20,000-square-foot store; and Linens ‘N Things Inc., which is set open a 37,500-square-foot store.
Plans also call for restaurants and a drug store. The center will be known as Amerige Heights Town Center, span 420,000 square feet and cost an estimated $55 million to develop.
Regency already counts several developments in Orange County, including Morningside Plaza in Fullerton, Heritage Plaza in Irvine and Newland Center in Huntington Beach.
The Amerige Heights project is part of a regional trend toward converting former aerospace properties into retail and office centers. In September, Zelman Development Co. received approval for the 103-acre Burbank Empire Center on a former Lockheed Martin Corp. property in Burbank.
“With most large parcels of land already spoken for, developers are turning to creative strategies for projects of this size,” Bauman said. “Reuse of dormant aerospace properties makes sense to developers for many reasons, not the least of which is the large blocks of contiguous property that are located in communities with desirable demographics.”
Studies of Fullerton and the surrounding North County area showed demand for new retail space, Bauman said.
With related commercial development, Amerige Heights stands to be the largest masterplanned community in North County, Bauman said. Plans call for a community reminiscent of the 1930s, with more than half of the planned 1,250 single-family homes offering porches in the front and garages in the back. Also envisioned is a 10-acre elementary school and up to 200 apartments.
For years, the Fullerton site served as a Hughes complex where as many as 13,000 employees worked on defense systems during its heyday. Raytheon Co., which bought the defense arm of Hughes in 1997, still operates on a small part of the sprawling complex.
SunCal acquired the property in 1998 and last year received city approval for the Amerige Heights project. The retail center was a big selling point for city officials looking to generate tax revenue from the site’s reuse.
But Amerige Heights Town Center faces a challenge in that the property is a couple of miles away from the nearest freeway. Still, retailers there could benefit from their proximity to Amerige Heights residents and others in new housing developments in Buena Park, just a half-mile away.
“Usually power centers build off the synergy of other businesses,” Bauman said. “This project is unique because it’s a pioneering move into a new area,a residential area.” n
