The transfer of the Tustin Marine base to the city of Tustin is taking longer than expected, but that hasn’t stopped companies from lining up to work on developing the 1,600-acre site in the middle of Orange County.
“We’re hoping we can see construction on residential and commercial by the beginning of the year,” said Christine Shingleton, Tustin’s assistant city manager and its redevelopment director for the base.
Already, the South Orange County Community College District, which is scheduled to take over a 100-acre parcel to be called the Advanced Technology & Education Park, has chosen Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates of Los Angeles as the master developer for the project. Hardy Holzman is same company that developed Soka University in Aliso Viejo.
Currently, Tustin is winnowing down proposals from a wide variety of developers for three other sites on the former base:
n Sixteen developers applied to develop a 25-acre medium-to-high-density housing site at Edinger and Harvard avenues. The city recently narrowed its list to four: Greystone Homes, Shea Homes Southern California, John Laing Homes and a team led by Standard Pacific Corp. It’s expected to be the first residential site to be developed on the base because it’s been cleared of environmental problems.
n Twelve developers are seeking to build the 247-acre commercial business industrial site. Tustin officials are expected to narrow this list and present it to the City Council later this month.
n Eight developers are seeking to develop a big-box retail site on 40 acres at the corner of Barranca Parkway and Jamboree Road. Tustin officials will be presenting a short list to the City Council in the first week of September.
The Tustin base is a considered a prime piece of real estate because it’s all on flat land in the heart of OC. Shingleton said the number of proposals submitted is two to three times greater than for most redevelopment projects.
Of the base’s 1,600 acres, 450 acres have been zoned for housing, 798 acres for commercial uses and 351 for nonprofit uses such as a community park and rights of way.
Some of the residential areas are expected to take longer to build because more environmental cleanup is required. About 4,600 residential units are projected to be built on the former base. The base has 1,200 existing housing units; it hasn’t been yet decided whether these will stay, though those units more than 10 years old are expected to be demolished.
The Marines first announced the Tustin base closure in 1991 and officially closed the base more than a year ago. Still, transfer of the property has been delayed. Unlike its neighboring Marine base, El Toro, there is no widespread opposition to the reuse of Tustin. But there have been reports that the Navy objects to the residential component of the city’s plan, questioning whether it would bring economic benefits to the area,a condition for transferring the base. Some observers also suspect Washington, D.C., politics may be behind the delays.
Nevertheless, Shingleton said she does expect certain portions to be transferred by the end of the year, such as two school sites for the Tustin School District.
Last September, the South Orange County college district named Don Goodwin vice chancellor in charge of developing the 100-acre Advanced Technology & Education Park. Previously, Goodwin was executive director of the Higher Education and Advanced Technology Center, a similar project at the former Lowery Air Force base in Denver.
“The business environment in Denver isn’t as a broad as Orange County’s,” Goodwin said. “There are one or two clusters, telecommunications and biomed and biotech. Here in OC, you have 12 to 15 substantial clusters, which will make this project much broader in its scope. It will be much easier to develop.”
He is expecting the Technology Park to offer training facilities for professions such as automotive design, film and digital production, biotech and computer science. Goodwin, who also has been president of Texas State Technical College in Waco, said an estimated $70 million to $80 million is expected to be spent in the next 10 years to develop the site.
Goodwin said the college district has established agreements with six companies thus far and he expects to announce the agreements once the base is transferred officially.
“One is a major information technology company with a presence in Orange County but is based on the East Coast,” he said. “Another is a local commercial video company that’s committed to building a sound stage.”
Another firm, Birmingham, Ala.-based Capstone Development, has agreed to finance renovation or new construction of residential facilities and manage those for the district. The site currently has dormitories with 1,000 rooms, some of which might be saved for use by students.
The Technology Park has a commitment from California State University, Fullerton, to bring upper-division engineering, computer science and digital communications here, complemented by courses from Saddleback and Irvine community colleges.
“We have a lot of stuff in the pipeline,” Goodwin said. n
