The developer of Great Park Neighborhoods in Irvine is planning to launch its next phase of home development in early 2017.
Aliso Viejo-based FivePoint Communities Inc., which is overseeing the massive redevelopment at the former El Toro Marine base, said last week that it has chosen six builders to put up 727 homes at the as-of-yet unnamed project.
A good deal of grading and infrastructure work has been done in recent months on the land that will hold the homes, which is just north of Trabuco Road near the northwestern edge of the former base.
Model homes should open in January, according to the developer, which last week also announced it had completed a restructuring deal that combines ownership of Great Park Neighborhoods with three other big projects it runs in California: Newhall Ranch in Los Angeles County, and Candlestick Point and the Shipyard in San Francisco.
The four mixed-use communities will hold nearly 40,000 residential homes and 20 million square feet of commercial space when built out. FivePoint now calls itself the largest developer of mixed-use communities in coastal California.
The newly organized company will operate as FivePoint Holdings Inc. It will continue to be led by Chief Executive Emile Haddad, the former chief investment officer of Lennar Corp. who started the locally based real estate company in 2009.
Haddad is part of this week’s OC50, the Business Journal’s annual inventory of the local business community’s most influential members (see entry in special section insert, related stories, page 1, below on this page).
The next phase of home development at Great Park Neighborhoods includes four builders that have built in the two prior phases overseen by FivePoint: Miami-based Lennar, Atlanta-based PulteGroup, Walnut’s Shea Homes, and Newport Beach-based William Lyon Homes.
Lennar, the largest investor in the newly reorganized FivePoint, will be the most active builder in the project, with 312 homes being built under its name.
Two other local builders—Irvine-based TRI Pointe Group Inc. and Aliso Viejo-based New Home Co.— will be building their first homes at the former Marine base, which joins Irvine Ranch and Rancho Mission Viejo as the three largest master-planned communities in OC where homebuilding is under way.
Neither TRI Pointe nor New Home Co. is involved in Beacon Park, the community now selling at Great Park Neighborhoods, or was involved in Pavilion Park, the first community to open there.
The 960-home Beacon Park project launched last summer and has 10 builders involved, including two based in Orange County—CalAtlantic Group Inc. in Irvine and Warmington Residential in Costa Mesa.
The 726-home Pavilion Park opened in 2013 and had eight builders.
TRI Pointe plans to build 170 homes at the new community between two product types, according to its latest quarterly report: a townhome collection and a garden court collection.
New Home Co. plans to build 54 homes in the next phase of development, according to its latest quarterly report, which was released April 29.
New Home has built a niche as the most active builder of multimillion-dollar homes in Orange County over the past few years, though its offering at the new Great Park project will be more affordable, with homes likely in the $500,000 to $750,000 range, Chief Executive Larry Webb said last week.
“We like that we’re not at the top end of the market,” he said. “We had a desire to be in the Great Park, but at a more affordable price point.”
New Home is embarking on a similar strategy at Rancho Mission Viejo, where it plans to open a pair of more affordable projects next year, its first at the master-planned community in South OC.
“We wanted to be there but were not as comfortable being at the top of the market” in terms of pricing, Webb said.
TRI Pointe also has plans to build an additional 121 homes at Rancho Mission Viejo next year between a pair of projects, according to its latest quarterly report. The homes will be a continuation of its Aubergine and Aria projects that are selling at Esencia, the 2,700-home second village at the development.
The homes now offered in the Aria line start at $615,000, and Aubergine homes are priced at a little more than $1 million, according to TRI Pointe’s regulatory filings.
The latest land deal means that within OC, New Home “will be in all three of the (major) master plans by 2017,” said Webb, one of five new entries in this week’s edition of the OC50.
The listing also includes the heads of each of the three big master-planned communities: Irvine Company owner and Chairman Donald Bren; Rancho Mission Viejo LLC Chief Executive Tony Moiso, and FivePoint’s Haddad.
Toll Brothers
Along with the 727-home project planned for next year, an 840-home project called Heritage Hills is scheduled to open at some point in 2017 at Great Park Neighborhoods.
It’s being developed by a venture between Lennar and Horsham, Pa.-based Toll Brothers.
Heritage Hills will have the most expensive homes yet at Great Park Neighborhoods, with prices ranging $2.5 million and up, according to FivePoint.
The 3,700-acre Great Park Neighborhoods site, which largely surrounds Orange County Great Park, is entitled to hold about 9,500 homes upon buildout, in addition to nearly 5 million square feet of commercial space.
