Donald Bren went all in last year to try to bring Amazon’s second headquarters to Irvine, a rare public display of deal soliciting from Orange County’s dominant businessperson.
It was far from being the only ambitious effort made by the Irvine Co. chairman last year, though.
Just as strongly, Bren went all in on Irvine—in particular, the Spectrum area, which his company largely runs.
Irvine Co. pushed forward on Irvine real estate development at a rate unmatched in Southern California, with several million square feet of commercial projects, and thousands of homes and apartments advanced.
The projects represent a multibillion-dollar investment for the Newport Beach-based company, whose sole shareholder is Bren, making him OC’s wealthiest person, with an estimated fortune of $17 billion.
The results of the investments speak for themselves, and are the reason we’ve chosen him as our Businessperson of the Year.
A few highlights for Bren and his privately held real estate firm over the course of 2017 include:
• The Irvine Ranch was recognized as the best-selling U.S. master-planned community, with nearly 2,000 homes sold over the course of the year and about 10,000 homes since 2010.
Thousands more are under way, a good portion of them with prices over $1 million, and with little indication of a slowdown in the local housing market.
• The Spectrum became the go-to location for office tenants seeking new high-end space, the company’s high-rise and midrise offices getting the lion’s share of new area deals.
Automaker Mazda North American Operations, cybersecurity firm Cylance Inc. and respiratory device maker Vyaire Medical are among the big corporate names that chose the area’s latest glitzy offices, all built by Irvine Co., to hold substantial operations.
The company’s base of more than 20 million square feet of Spectrum-area offices is more than 95% occupied.
• Irvine Co.’s Spectrum Center shopping mecca proceeded on a $150 million renovation.
The changes will transform the outdoor mall’s former Macy’s into more modern shops and restaurants.
It’s one of OC’s biggest retail reinventions under way. As “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” jetted to $600 million in first-week sales in December, no U.S. venue sold more tickets in the first two days than Regal’s screens at the shopping center.
• The Spectrum remained the busiest area in OC for apartment development, with several thousand units added. Irvine Co.’s base of nearly 9,000 apartments there are largely full and continue to notch healthy rental increases, according to market reports.
The facts speak for themselves, according to Bren.
“The ultimate judge of what we’ve done is the marketplace,” he said.
“Businesses and individuals have chosen to live here,” Bren said. “And they keep coming.”
Dear Mr. Bezos
Bren declined, politely, to comment for this story. It’s been several years since he’s given an in-depth interview to any media outlet.
Quotes for the story are pulled from his Oct. 12 letter to Amazon Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos that was part of Irvine’s HQ2 bid, an effort the city built in conjunction with Irvine Co.
The 152-page bid appears to be one of the more thorough, data-heavy, and professionally drafted responses to Amazon’s call for bids for a second headquarters, based on a reading of the RFPs that have been made publicly available since November.
It’s also one of just a few that was largely initiated by a private developer rather than a city alone.
A total of 238 cities and municipalities made pitches to land the campus, which could bring about 50,000 jobs to the winning area.
Irvine isn’t considered a leading candidate to grab the estimated $5 billion project, nor are other OC areas that submitted RFPs, according to most national news reports.
Most prognosticators give the edge to larger cities on the other side of the country, such as Boston, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
But few bids could make an elevator pitch that matches the one Bren gave to Bezos.
“Today, Irvine is ranked by various sources as America’s fastest-growing, most desirable, best educated, safest, and healthiest large city,” he said in the letter to his fellow multibillionaire.
The claims are backed in the RFP by market reports, studies and other data sources, including internal Irvine Co. studies.
The bid “put the strength of Irvine in particular, and the Orange County region in general, front and center,” Irvine Mayor Don Wagner said last week.
The mayor notes that Irvine’s bid for the campus is likely a longshot, but that he believes that regardless of Amazon’s ultimate decision, the bid will have plenty of benefits as a marketing pitch for other businesses that might consider moving here.
“I think it has a rippling effect across the (region’s) business and real estate community,” Wagner said. “It’s going to pay dividends.”
Fast Track
Bren, 85, first invested in Irvine Co. in 1977, when the city’s population was measured in tens of thousands. He presciently bought out some legendary investors, including Max Fisher and Herb Allen.
Irvine’s population is now about 270,000, and has increased more than 25% since 2010.
About 40% of its jobs base is in white-collar positions, the RFP said, and technology-focused companies dominate the landscape, some 30,000 jobs related to the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.
Development in Irvine has been “one of our company’s proudest achievements,” Bren’s letter to Bezos said.
Much of the city’s recent growth has taken place in the Spectrum on the southern edge of the city.
Bren describes the area as, “in essence a city center within-a-city.”
“It has become Orange County’s ‘downtown,’ an economic powerhouse with more than 900 technology companies, 30 million square feet of office space, 9,000 apartment homes and an extraordinary major lifestyle center,” he said.
Adding Amazon would super-size the growth.
Irvine Co.’s “one-click” pitch for HQ2 calls for the e-commerce giant to build its new base in the Spectrum, the developer financing construction of the buildings.
The city’s already fast growth pace—aided in part by an active infill housing development push near John Wayne Airport and construction under way at Great Park Neighborhoods—hasn’t pleased all residents. Some are pushing the city to enact a slow-growth measure similar to rules placed on development in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.
Irvine Co. officials maintain the city’s current hyper-growth, particularly that in the Spectrum area, was always part of the design.
“Guided by the Master Plan, Irvine has evolved into a world-class city beloved for its schools, safety, open space and village lifestyle,” the company said in August, when the slow-growth proposal was brought to the city, and around the time it indicated interest in attracting HQ2.
“In the coming months, those who love and respect our city will need to weigh the intended and unintended consequences of the proposed initiative that, if enacted, will override the Master Plan,” the company said then.
