Plans are under way to build a high-end senior living facility on the site of Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, where the museum has been since the late 1970s.
An affiliate of Santa Ana-based Nexus Development Corp. recently completed the purchase of the museum’s roughly two-acre site near Fashion Island, according to property records.
The property at 850 San Clemente Drive sold for $24 million, based on a reading of property taxes paid for it.
Per acre, it’s among the most expensive property sales in the area in recent years.
Museum Move
The sale should jump-start OCMA’s long-planned goal to move to a new facility to be built at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa.
Plans for the new museum are scheduled to be unveiled late this month; a construction timeline hasn’t been disclosed.
The sale of the existing museum property, intended to help fund the Costa Mesa project, has been in the works for nearly a decade.
In 2008, the museum said it received legal title to a 1.64-acre parcel slated for the Costa Mesa facility on the Avenue of the Arts. It would be the last of three arts projects on 6 acres given in 1998 to the Orange County Performing Arts Center—later renamed Segerstrom Center for the Arts—by South Coast Plaza and the Segerstrom family. A South Coast Repertory theater expansion was completed in 2001, and the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall opened in 2006.
Related Backlash
OCMA announced in 2014 that it was working with the local division of New York-based developer Related Cos. on the sale of the Newport Beach site. Related Cos. ultimately unveiled plans to build a 26-story Museum House condominium development that would have been Orange County’s tallest residential tower, but it failed to get approvals due to public opposition to the project.
Associated litigation was resolved this year, according to local news reports. Related Cos. never closed on the land purchase.
Vivante Redux
Nexus Development itself is no stranger to high-rise development. It built OC’s tallest residential buildings, the two-tower Skyline at MacArthur project in South Coast Metro.
It also developed Vivante on the Coast, a 185-unit senior living community in Costa Mesa near Hoag Hospital that opened in 2013 and was the first high-end senior living facility built in the Newport Beach area in nearly 20 years.
Monthly rents there started at about $4,000 when it opened.
The buyer of the museum site is listed in property records as Vivante at Newport Center LLC, which got a $17.8 million loan from Pacific Western Bank to fund the deal.
Executives at the developer declined to comment on the transaction or the firm’s site plans, which it hasn’t yet filed with the city; there appear to be entitlements for about 100 residential units remaining in Newport Center before area development would require voter approval.
Irvine Co. Nod
A much shorter project than Related Cos.’ Museum House tower proposal is envisioned for the Newport Beach site this time, based on documents filed as part of the purchase that suggest the developer already has the blessing of dominant area property owner Irvine Co. for the development.
Irvine Co. initially gave the land to the museum and therefore had legal remedies in regards to future development.
According to a May 9 agreement between Nexus and Newport Beach-based Irvine Co., the site will be redeveloped “as a single-integrated, first-class, senior-living community project,” and could also include adjacent land.
Nexus’ project would top off at 65 feet, according to the agreement, which also appears to give Irvine Co. the right of first refusal to buy the project if Nexus ever sells it.
Related Cos.’ condo plan, by comparison, would have been about 295 feet tall. Irvine Co. objected to the tower, in part due to the height, which would have impacted views at some of its Newport Center office towers.
