The owners of MainPlace Mall in Santa Ana, Orange County’s ninth-largest shopping center by sales, have proposed an extensive overhaul of the roughly 50-acre property.
Under early-stage plans being shown to area residents and businesses, a massive mixed-use redevelopment is being considered involving a mix of apartments, offices and hotel rooms being added around the site’s core retail space.
A new master plan would allow up to 1,900 residential units, 400 hotel rooms, 1.4 million square feet of retail space, and up to 750,000 square feet of office space.
MainPlace Mall currently takes up about 1.1 million square feet. It’s owned by Dallas-based Centennial Real Estate, which paid Sydney-based Westfield Corp. $1.1 billion for it and four other U.S. malls in early 2016.
Its main financial partner in the purchase and the planned redevelopment is USAA Real Estate Co. in San Antonio.
Three-story MainPlace, just off the Santa Ana (5) Freeway on Main Street, took in about $260 million in sales last year. It has about 200 stores, 14 restaurants, two department stores, a gym and other entertainment options.
More than 9 million shoppers, diners and others visit the mall each year, according to Centennial.
Approval of the redevelopment would require a city zoning change and present other entitlement issues. A groundbreaking schedule hasn’t been announced.
Centennial Chief Executive Steven Levin said the project will cost “several hundred million dollars.”
The company’s embarking on similar redevelopments at retail properties it owns in Chicago, Levin said at a public outreach meeting at MainPlace late last month.
He said the project is “what we wanted to do” since Centennial acquired the property and some associated development rights.
New Uses
Most of the proposed residential units would be in five midrise apartment complexes, according to filed plans.
Office buildings about 10 stories tall are also proposed, according to renderings filed with Santa Ana’s planning department.
Two hotels could also be built, along with several parking structures, outdoor areas and retail space.
Most of the existing mall would remain relatively unchanged, but other portions of the property, such as the JCPenney store, could be converted to other uses, based on the developer’s statements and filed plans.
The addition of housing units “will be ideal for live-work spaces, serving nearby workers in retail, hospital and government,” the developer said in its community outreach.
“This project proactively addresses the issues facing retail properties across the nation, creating a thriving MainPlace for generations to come,” the company said.
The goal is to “create a sense of place,” Levin said in May. “This isn’t South Coast Plaza. It’s not Brea.”
The mall has already had its share of change since Centennial bought it. One anchor tenant, Nordstrom, vacated its store last year; Levin said his company was aware that was a possibility at the time it bought the mall.
It paid about $10 million more to buy back the roughly 150,000-square-foot Nordstrom space last year, according to property records.
Levin said last month that his company is close to announcing a few notable tenants as additions that would fit in well with the planned redevelopment.
Apartment development around MainPlace is already in overdrive with several new projects under way within a few blocks in Santa Ana and neighboring Orange that would add several thousand rental units to the area.
The newest entry to the market is Eleven10 West, a 260-unit apartment project opening this month on the opposite side of Main Street in Orange. It’s being built by The Picerne Group in Newport Beach.
The project is at 1110 Town & Country Road about a block from the Children’s Hospital of Orange County and St. Joseph Hospital Orange.
