Another residential tower is being considered for the sprawling Central Park West mixed-use development in Irvine.
Lennar Corp. has proposed building a tower that appears to include 11 floors of residential space on top of ground-floor space that would include a small amount of retail uses, according to project renderings recently filed with the city.
The project would be at the intersection of Jamboree Road and Michelson Drive a few blocks from John Wayne Airport on the last significant undeveloped portion of the roughly 43-acre Central Park West site.
Specific plans haven’t been filed with the city; a conditional-use permit will be filed in a few months, according to Tim Strader Jr., principal with Irvine-based entitlement consultancy Starpointe Ventures, which works with Lennar.
It’s not known whether Miami-based Lennar would build the project or sell the land to another developer.
The other two residential towers at Central Park West, the 240-unit Astoria, are owned by a unit of the Florida-based State Board of Administration, which invests on behalf of several retirement, pension and investment funds in that state.
The State Board bought the property, which is on the opposite corner of Central Park West from the proposed new tower site, about five years ago for a reported $144 million.
Astoria, whose 15-story buildings were built in 2009, was initially conceived as a for-sale condo development, but was switched to rentals following the housing crash.
IBC’s Largest
The site of the proposed project has been fenced off and unused for more than a decade and through several phases of construction at Central Park West, a former industrial site Lennar and other partners bought in 2004.
The development, just off the San Diego (405) Freeway at Jamboree Road, was envisioned as the first urban master-planned community in the Irvine Business Complex, the largely commercial area surrounding the airport. It’s also one of the few IBC residential development sites to have focused on for-sale housing.
Central Park West is entitled for 1,275 homes. As of December, 672 condos, townhomes and apartments had been built, and just over 300 units were under way, according to city filings.
That would leave a little under 300 units for the proposed tower.
Construction and sales activity have been in full force at other parts of Central Park West in recent months.
The four-story, for-sale Hudson project next to the 405 is in full construction mode, with prices expected to start around $400,000 when sales begin this year. Lennar is currently selling the new Rockefeller townhomes, which are going for more than $1 million.
Latest Revision
The site where the new residential tower would rise was once envisioned for 90,000 square feet of office and other uses. The office concept was later eliminated, and revised plans incorporated more retail, in large part to serve residents living there.
Lennar told Central Park West residents in early 2016 that it planned a midrise project at the site totaling 285 homes and about 27,000 square feet of retail. Later that year, school bond-related documents showed it would reduce the retail portion to about 10,000 square feet.
Irvine City Council member and Mayor Pro Tem Christina Shea said last week that she understood a neighborhood shopping center, such as a Trader Joe’s, was to be built on the property.
Trader Joe’s stores typically range 10,000 square feet to 15,000 square feet; there’s been no announcement that the grocer or any other large grocery chain is considering the site.
The current site proposal “includes a mix of residential and (a) neighborhood market,” city staff said last week.
Strader said the soon-to-be-filed plans will likely include about 10,000 square feet of “resident-serving” retail uses, such as a village market.
Bridge Plans
Renderings of the proposed high-rise were disclosed in a city council hearing last week related to discussions on a long-planned pedestrian bridge over Jamboree Road.
The bridge would help ease traffic flow and link Central Park West with the Park Place mixed-use campus on the opposite side of Jamboree. Its cost is projected to be about $20 million.
The intersection of Jamboree and Michelson is the busiest in Irvine based on traffic counts, according to city data. On some weekdays, more than 300 pedestrians cross the intersection where the bridge would go up, according to city figures; on weekends, that drops to about 200.
Lennar and Irvine-based LBA Realty, which runs much of Park Place, have expressed a preference to build a girder-style bridge, while the city’s transportation committee recommended a truss-style design.
Irvine City Council voted three to one last week to proceed on the girder-style design; Mayor Don Wagner was the lone no vote, and one member was absent.
