Add one more large property near the Honda Center to the growing real estate portfolio of Henry and Susan Samueli, the owners of the Anaheim Ducks.
An affiliate of the Samueli family, which operates most of its business lines through its Corona del Mar-based H&S Ventures entity, last month closed on the purchase of an 18.1-acre stretch of undeveloped land just north of the city-owned Honda Center, the 19,000-seat venue where the hockey team plays its home games.
The Samuelis, under an affiliate listed in state records as North Basin Land LLC, paid $24 million for the land, or roughly $1.3 million an acre.
It was sold by the Orange County Water District; a deal had been in negotiations since last September and was approved by the district’s board earlier this year, according to the agency’s regulatory filings.
The site is at 1200 and 1204 S. Phoenix Club Drive, south of Ball Road. The land runs between the Santa Ana River and the Anaheim Auto Center collection of car stores.
The land was once considered as a potential site for an electrical generation station, a project that never moved ahead.
The site is now planned to be included in an ambitious mixed-use development potentially featuring housing, entertainment and retail uses—specific details of which have yet to be disclosed—featuring several Samueli-controlled properties that surround the Honda Center.
Anaheim Arena Management LLC, another unit of H&S Ventures, has run the Honda Center since 2003 and late last year reached a deal to continue operating the facility for at least another 30 years, while also funding upgrades to the 26-year-old arena.
As part of that deal, which became effective at the start of February, the Samuelis acquired a quartet of surface parking lots surrounding Honda Center, paying $10.1 million for the sites, which total roughly 16 acres.
Anaheim Arena Management is also taking over operations, but not ownership, of the city’s ARTIC transit station for 25 years as part of that deal.
Offices, Too
The water district land is adjacent to one of the four parking lots that H&S Ventures bought from the city.
It’s also next to the Samuelis’ largest reported real estate deal on record: the recently bought Arena Corporate Center office complex.
An affiliate of H&S Ventures last November paid about $125 million for the trio of low-rise offices that total about 385,000 square feet and sits north of the Honda Center, a deal first reported by the Business Journal.
Broadcom co-founder Henry and his family now owns or controls more than 75 acres to the immediate east of the Orange (57) Freeway, running north from ARTIC to Ball Road.
They’ve spent a figure approaching $200 million to assemble those sites over the past year or two, according to property records.
The Samuelis bought the Ducks from Walt Disney Co. in 2005 for about $75 million. They took over operations of the arena, previously known as the Arrowhead Pond, a few years earlier.
The hockey team is now valued at about $460 million, according to Forbes Magazine.
The Business Journal estimates the Samueli family’s fortune at about $4 billion, much of which is Broadcom stock.
Development Timeline
H&S Ventures has 18 months to submit a development plan for the land it bought from Anaheim, according to city filings.
There’s plenty of potential entitlements available in the area, which falls within the 820-acre Platinum Triangle area of the city.
The area, when built out, could hold about 17,500 residential units, 9.2 million square feet of office development and another 4.8 million square feet of other commercial property types.
To date, apartment development—roughly 3,500 units—has made up the bulk of new construction in the Platinum Triangle over the past decade. Nearly another 1,900 residential units are in various stages of development, city filings indicate.
Three big projects in various stages of development: Lennar Corp.’s A-Town, LT Global Investment’s LT Platinum Center and JPI’s Jefferson Stadium Park, are expected to result in for-sale, hospitality and retail development uses added to the area, along with more rentals.
Those projects—China-backed LT Global remains in a wait-and-see mode, and has yet to break ground—represent about $1 billion in planned investment.
More than 10,000 additional residential units, along with much of the zone’s allowable commercial development, are allowed for the Platinum Triangle under current city guidelines, but have yet to be entitled to a specific property owner, city filings noted in the parking lot land sale agreement with H&S Ventures.
Selling the 16 acres of land to AAM would “create endless opportunities” for a unified redevelopment of the area, a memo from Anaheim city manager said in support of that agreement.
City officials have indicated an entertainment and retail center is a likely option for a portion of the land. A large parking structure—projected to cost about $18 million—might also replace some or all of the surface parking lots.
The area’s potential is most frequently compared to Golden 1 Center in Sacramento or the L.A. Live entertainment complex next to the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Anaheim spokesman Mike Lyster said.
“We welcome investment in the area from the team behind the Ducks,” Lyster told the Business Journal.
“We just struck a long-term lease with the team, and we look forward to working with them on a vision for the area around the arena that works well with the larger vision for the Platinum Triangle.”
