While retail watchers are keeping an eye on what, if any, redevelopment plans are in store for the Sears space at Costa Mesa’s glitzy South Coast Plaza, the mall’s owners are proceeding with a less glamorous project a few miles away.
C.J. Segerstrom & Sons filed plans with the city to build a nearly 100,000-square-foot industrial property on land it owns at its Harbor Gateway business park.
The proposed 1585 MacArthur Blvd. project would be at the intersection of MacArthur and Hyland Avenue, a few blocks north of the South Coast Collection shopping center and Vans’ new headquarters.
The single-story building would be on roughly 5.8 acres and include about 200 parking spaces.
The design would include “tilt-up walls with scored wall accents, architectural projections, blue glass windows, and (a) silver metallic canopy,” according to documents filed with Costa Mesa’s planning division, which describes the proposal as both an office and industrial building.
Harbor Gateway’s existing buildings are a mix of low-rise flex and office properties, the largest 85,000 square feet, CoStar Group Inc. records show. C.J. Segerstrom & Sons runs most of the properties there.
A tenant hasn’t been announced for the relatively small industrial project, which would nevertheless be among the largest ground-up developments of its type in Costa Mesa in some time.
The Segerstrom family got initial approvals for a development at the site in the 1980s, so the project shouldn’t be impacted by the city’s recently enacted slow-growth measures. The land owner and developer have been working with the Irvine office of DRA Architects on the project.
Surf City Update
In my Feb. 19 column, I noted that apartment owner and developer UDR Inc. was nearing a deal to shed the 264-unit Pacific Shores complex in Huntington Beach.
The Highlands Ranch, Colo.-based firm said at the time that it struck a deal with an undisclosed buyer for the complex, which is about a mile west of the San Diego (405) Freeway on Warner Avenue. The property would have sold for $90.5 million.
The buyer has since been disclosed: TruAmerica Multifamily, a Los Angeles-based investor that manages more than 30,000 rental units across the country, completed the purchase late last month.
The buyer said the deal falls into its wheelhouse. It said in a statement that it looks for “well-located Class B multifamily assets that can benefit from strategic renovation while still keeping rents affordable for working families and individuals seeking quality rental housing.”
TruAmerica said it plans a multimillion-dollar capital improvement program to include “a complete overhaul of 74 units that have been virtually untouched since the property was constructed in 1970.”
Pacific Shores is one of three Orange County apartment complexes to sell for more than $90 million so far this year, according to CoStar records. The largest of those is a stone’s throw from Pacific Shores. Surf at 39, a 400-unit complex on Viewpoint Lane, sold in January for a reported $134 million, or $335,000 per unit.
Pacific Shores traded hands for $342,800 per unit.
Surf at 39 was bought by a fund run by Los Altos-based Interstate Equities Corp., which said it planned to keep the complex a “workforce housing community” with relatively affordable rents.
