A new retail brokerage report has given credence to Orange County’s growing status as a foodie haven, particularly when it comes to hip food halls.
OC has the biggest number of active food hall developments of any suburban market in the country, according to a new report on the restaurant-centered retail centers by brokerage Cushman & Wakefield Inc.
The area is home to seven food halls totaling about 156,000 square feet, according to the report. All have opened in the past five years, beginning with the 22,000-square-foot OC Mix at SOCO in Costa Mesa, which hosts 18 food vendors, according to the New York-based brokerage’s report.
The largest of the local bunch is the 42,000-square-foot Packing House in Anaheim, which opened two years ago.
“Orange County has been way ahead of the rest of the country in terms of suburban markets embracing what has been, until now, pretty much an urban trend,” said Garrick Brown, vice president of retail research for the Americas, in a statement.
“… Food halls in Irvine, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and throughout Orange County have been thriving for quite a while. We expect to see more of these projects being developed throughout all of Southern California down the road,” he said.
Los Angeles, by comparison, has more than 350,000 square feet of food hall space that’s open or being built, and San Diego has just 33,000 square feet, according to the report.
OC’s entire collection of food halls could fit into the country’s best-known one—Chelsea Market in New York, which runs about 165,000 square feet.
The next OC food hall that’s scheduled to open is the 9,000-square-foot Trade Marketplace in a strip center under renovation on Michelson Drive in Irvine a few blocks from John Wayne Airport. The developer, the Irvine office of Lincoln Property Co. Commercial, also plans to build a food hall as part of the first batch of construction of its Flight creative-office campus in Tustin, where work is scheduled to start next year.
Macy’s Redo
Newport Beach-based KBS Realty has added another notable redevelopment project to its pipeline.
The company, best known recently for investing in existing office towers, industrial properties and apartment complexes, recently bought the five ground floors of the historic, 16-story Meier & Frank Building in downtown Portland, Ore.
KBS bought the space in a venture with Chicago-based Sterling Bay Co. in a deal valued at $54 million.
The floors were sold by Macy’s, which operates a department store at the location. The store will close next year, and the new owners plan to redevelop its share of the building into a mix of creative-office space and retail uses, according to local news reports.
The building, which opened in 1909, has a hotel and restaurant on its top floors.
The Portland deal comes a few weeks after KBS announced plans to redevelop a former church site across the street from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan for a new retail development. An affiliate of the investor is under contract to pay $38.4 million for an 80% stake, according to regulatory filings.
In other KBS news, recent regulatory filings noted that company Chief Executive Charles Schreiber is now a member of the board of directors and executive committee of Newport Beach-based Irvine Co., OC’s dominant real estate company.
Privately held Irvine Co. doesn’t disclose the names of all of its members; other notable execs believed to be on the board include developer Rick Caruso, former California Gov. Pete Wilson, and private equity firm head Peter Ueberroth.
KBS chairman and president Peter Bren is the brother of Irvine Company chairman Donald Bren and works out of the company’s New York office.
Irvine Co. also has some experience renovating a one-time Macy’s store. It’s in the midst of building retail space at its Irvine Spectrum shopping center, where there previously was a Macy’s.
