Shaheen Sadeghi, the visionary behind the Anaheim Packing House and other hip retail concepts, has picked a 12-acre site in San Marcos in San Diego County as his next challenge.
But the retail-focused developer hasn’t lost interest in local projects, and has several OC projects in the works.
Costa Mesa-based LAB Holding LLC is in negotiations to buy 11 city-owned parcels that Sadeghi foresees as “Burning Man meets the maker arts colony,” referring to businesses that sell handmade goods, and the annual gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert that focuses on self-expression and culminates in the burning of a large wooden effigy.
“It’s just a fantastic canvas for us to have a lot of fun with,” he said.
The San Marcos project will be Sadeghi’s third outside of Orange County.
LAB Holding is in escrow on Corona Mall, 17 city-owned buildings straddling East Sixth Street in Corona and priced at $1.8 million. Sadeghi also plans to buy two adjacent parking lots covering 5.6 acres for another $6 million. “There are a lot of opportunities in Corona, particularly for the maker culture,” he said.
LAB Holding is also turning about 40 city-owned properties and parcels in northern Long Beach into a small-business retail center.
“There is cool everywhere. We just have to take the product to the people,” Sadeghi said, referring to LAB Holding’s long-standing development strategy of “localization, personalization and customization” in lieu of “national homogenized tenants.”
“We are probably described best as a cultural engineering company,” he said. “We develop a platform that brings all the right-minded people together and creates a village that can present a culture or a product that resonates with the community … I think this next generation of customers is bright. They get it, and they are looking for authenticity.”
OC Operations
In Orange County, LAB Holding recently purchased two buildings in SOBECA, Costa Mesa’s pedestrian-friendly retail and entertainment area near Bristol and Baker streets that’s anchored by Sadeghi’s LAB and CAMP centers.
One building, Labish, “will have a brewery that’s going to open up to the LAB,” while the other, Campout, will be “retail meets auto culture,” with a coffee roastery and a brewery to boot.
LAB Holding is also making its mark in Garden Grove with the Cottage Industries project, a collection of 22 houses and lots Sadeghi plans to lease to “nontraditional, nonhomogenized tenants.”
“The whole idea of doing commerce inside a home is very exciting to us, and it gives us an opportunity to develop a downtown for Garden Grove that they can call their own, with its own look,” he said. “By the end of the year, we should have a portion of it open.”
Also in LAB Holding’s pipeline is the 1920s Balboa Theater, which it plans to turn into a music venue, and the Agora Arts District in Laguna Niguel, where Sadeghi is developing a downtown center at the site of old county courthouse.
“It’s been a fairly complex deal because its county-owned land,” he said of the latter. “The entire project masses around a park—we call it a smart park—where there’s opportunity for people to connect. [It will feature] a mix of artisan foods, event space and retail.”
The company’s recent successes include several projects in Anaheim. The Packing House, for instance, “has set the standard for food halls here, and Center Street Promenade feels like a page out of the hippest part of Brooklyn,” said city spokesperson Michael Lyster.
“In a city known for major visitor attractions, our downtown is a major draw in and of itself,” Lyster said, adding that Sadeghi has “created a sense of place that’s modern yet timeless. Working with him, we’ve been able to cull together an eclectic mix of businesses, including an artisanal cheese shop and a trapeze school, you wouldn’t find anywhere else. And it all works.”
Some of those businesses are brands developed by LAB Holding, including Healthy Junk vegan restaurant, Hammer Workshop & Bar and Ink & Bean Coffee Saloon and Wordshop.
“Some of these products we’ll take to other locations, because … we don’t want to compromise and do anything mediocre,” Sadeghi said. “Let’s say we go to Corona and I can’t find a good coffee shop that’s not a national chain. We’ll put our own coffee shop in there—Ink & Bean.”
LAB Holding, which marked its 25th anniversary this year, employs 115 and has “made a profit every quarter from the year we started.” It owns and manages all properties it develops, and is “selective” about new ventures, according to Sadeghi.
“We take one out of 20 things that come across our table,” he said. “I probably get a call once a week from someone who wants us to put in a food hall for them.”
