City of Hope’s announcement of a planned $1 billion investment in a new cancer care center in Irvine, the largest and most ambitious healthcare development proposed for Orange County in over a decade, is a case study in adaptation.
“The world is evolving,” said Emile Haddad, chief executive of Irvine’s FivePoint Holdings LLC, the master developer of Irvine’s Great Park Neighborhoods, where the center will be built out over the next six years or so. The transition is “driven by demographic shifts [and] by technology.”
In terms of community development today, “if you don’t have a partner that is evolving, you’re setting that community up to be obsolete,” Haddad said. “You’re setting yourself up for failure.”
Changing plans on-the-go is evident in the recent actions of FivePoint and Duarte’s City of Hope, an independent research and treatment center for cancer.
A year ago, the two had plans to build a $200 million, 73,000-square-foot cancer center on some of FivePoint’s land near Irvine’s train station. A 2025 date was set for the opening, although that date was in flux due to entitlement issues on the initial land site.
The seven-year plan was soon reconsidered.
“We listened to our patients. We increased our urgency to get here sooner,” City of Hope President Annette Walker said.
In terms of what local patients need, Walker said she asked herself, “What are they really leaving Orange County for, and can we bring it here now?”
The scope of the project also got rethought. In Orange County, 20% or more of cancer patients leave the area for treatment, often go to Duarte’s 100-acre campus about 45 miles from Irvine. “The needs were greater than what we anticipated,” City of Hope Chief Executive Robert Stone told the Business Journal last week.
A new plan was devised with an eye on going bigger, and faster.
73,000 to 190,000 SF
The result was announced last week: a five-fold increase in City of Hope’s investment plans for its Irvine campus, to $1 billion, and perhaps more.
The first part of that funding comes from City of Hope’s purchase of one of four buildings at the FivePoint Gateway office campus, in what looks to be the largest office sale of the year so far in OC.
The currently vacant office at 15161 Alton Parkway runs about 190,000 square feet, more than double the size of what City of Hope initially envisioned.
Initially designed as a tech and development-focused building for chipmaker Broadcom, the office will be converted to City of Hope’s medical and research facilities and should open by 2021.
It will hold space for cutting-edge cancer outpatient treatment, research, and other uses.
City of Hope’s deal with FivePoint also includes the purchase of 11 acres of adjacent land that will hold additional development for the cancer center.
In total, the campus is expected to include:
n Orange County’s only specialty hospital dedicated solely to treating and curing cancer.
• An outpatient cancer center offering diagnostic imaging and screenings, precision medicine and early detection, medical oncology, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgical oncology, and ambulatory surgery.
• A clinical research center offering Phase I through III clinical trials.
• Personalized supportive care services that include palliative care physicians, psychiatrists, social workers, and others.
• Access to a wide range of solid tumor and blood cancer specialists dedicated to finding the best treatments for each patient.
It is envisioned “to be one of biggest [cancer] hubs in the world,” Stone said.
Terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed. The building was valued at more than $80 million as of two years ago when FivePoint bought the four-building campus from Broadcom and converted it into a multitenant property.
Stone said the development and offices would be funded in part through internal financing, although a capital campaign will also soon be established for the project.
FivePoint’s commitment to the project goes beyond the just-completed deal, which will see the master developer transfer some of the entitlements for commercial development on its Irvine land to the site, Haddad said.
“We see them as a partner, not a tenant,” he said.
Jobs, Schools
The deal has numerous ripple-down effects on the local business community, company officials said.
City of Hope will be making a hiring push for the new facilities, while also bringing employees down from Duarte.
Drug manufacturing jobs here are likely to get a boost; manufacturing will be done on-site, according to Stone.
Area universities could partner with City of Hope. “We’ll work with anyone,” Stone said.
City of Hope tackles cancer treatment in a holistic manner—with the whole patient in mind. “As healthcare becomes part of the increasing national dialogue, what runs the risk of getting lost is [that] these important policy decisions impact people’s lives,” Stone told the Business Journal.
It focuses in large part on immunotherapy to treat cancer—their approach trains the body’s CAR T-cells to target cancer. “Cancer is complex and there are multiple types of cancer. Patients want great outcomes, but they want to know that their doctor has an expertise in their type of cancer” Stone said.
More in Store
Haddad says the campus should be a galvanizing hub for commercial development at Great Park Neighborhoods, as well as the larger community.
When “you look at the future [of societies], you can’t not see that healthcare will be at the center” of it, he said.
FivePoint owns land on the opposite side of Alton Parkway that’s also envisioned for healthcare-focused commercial development, and Haddad said additional land could also be converted into similar uses going forward.
“We can create a hub from here to the freeway—the triangle for treatment.”
Expect more tweaks to the City of Hope plan and to the entire Great Park Neighborhoods build-out going forward, according to Haddad. He said that’s a good thing.
“We want to create a place that isn’t static, but dynamic—to [create a] sustainable society,” he said.
Development “might look random, but it isn’t.”
