The owners of the Newport Beach Car Wash are looking to make their mark on Newport Center’s residential market with an upscale housing project that aims to become what they call “a work of public art.”
They’re also trying to distance themselves from the drama being seen on the other side of Fashion Island, where developers of a 26-story condo tower—proposed to take the place of a museum—are in the early stages of seeking approvals.
Newport Center Anacapa Associates LLC, the owners of the 1.3-acre car wash site at the intersection of Newport Center Drive and Anacapa Drive, are looking to get city approvals to raze the commercial buildings on the land and build a seven-story, 49-unit luxury condo project in their place.
The project, dubbed 150 Newport Center, promises to be “the greatest residential product of its kind that Newport Beach has ever seen,” said Ron Soderling, a longtime Newport Beach-based developer and investor, and one of the owners of the car wash site.
Those claims don’t come cheap. The development team for 150 Newport Center expects that its project will cost close to $100 million to build, with individual units ultimately selling for $3 million and higher.
The team in 2014 paid a reported $12.5 million to buy the site—which previously operated under the name Beacon Bay Car Wash.
The sale, at roughly $9.6 million an acre, is among the highest reported prices for developable land in the county in the past decade.
The new owners said they feel they got a deal for the land, considering its location on the southern edge of glitzy Newport Center, home to Fashion Island and Orange County’s most prestigious offices.
“We saw a unique opportunity in an unbelievable city for the very best location,” Soderling said.
It’s not the most expensive car wash site to sell in Southern California, according to Tod Ridgeway, another principal of the development team. A car wash in downtown Los Angeles across the street from L.A. Live sold in 2014 to a high-rise hotel and condo developer for about $25 million.
Ridgeway, a former mayor of Newport Beach, is leading much of the entitlement work for the project.
Joining Soderling and Ridgeway as principals on the development team is Mike Lutton, the one-time head of the office and industrial portfolios for Irvine Company, which owns much of the property in and around Newport Center, where it’s headquartered.
He also has experience building residential towers in San Diego.
Also tapped for the project are Irvine-based general contractor Snyder Langston and Irvine-based architectural firm MVE + Partners Inc.
The developers describe the design of the project—which will have three levels of underground parking, plus a rooftop pool, among other features—as a “contemporary classic style” that will complement the surrounding community.
The development “is going to be a project that the community will be very proud of,” said MVE + Partners founder and Chairman Carl McLarand, a local resident.
Tall Competition
The owners of the site initially looked to build a 125-room hotel there. They changed gears after Newport Beach residents overwhelmingly rejected changes to the land-use portion of the city’s general plan in the 2014 election.
Processing of the residential project has been taking place in the city for about six months, Ridgeway said.
He said he’s optimistic that his group can get the necessary city approvals for the project by this summer—they’re close to completing an environmental impact report for the site—and start a two-year construction period in mid-2017.
An already complicated process for getting city approvals got an added dose of intrigue in February when Related California announced plans to build Orange County’s tallest residential tower on the opposite side of Newport Center.
The unit of New York-based Related Companies LP, which has an Irvine office, is proposing turning the 2-acre site that currently holds the Orange County Museum of Art into a 26-story luxury condominium tower with 100 units, dubbed Museum House.
The museum is looking to sell its home to fund construction of a new facility on land it owns in Costa Mesa’s Arts District.
The Museum House project is already facing its share of opposition from local slow-growth advocates, as well as those concerned about the project’s effects on traffic and views in the area around Newport Center.
Indeed, the developers behind 150 Newport Center are now looking to draw more attention to their own project, partially as a response to some of the initial backlash to the Museum House proposal.
A new marketing campaign is now being launched in part to generate interest from potential local buyers, but also to differentiate the project from the Related California proposal.
Among the selling points of their seven-story proposal is that the closing of the car wash should reduce local traffic.
The residential project would result in an estimated 75% decline in traffic in the immediate area from the car wash site’s current use—which can see more than 400 car trips a day—the owners said.
In addition, public views won’t be blocked by the development, according to the developers. A new website for the project, www.150NewportCenter.com, shows view lines of the proposed project from a variety of locations around Newport Center.
The project also is expected to bring in about $4.8 million in development fees to the city, according to the team behind the car wash site.
Race for Approvals
Ultimately, city approval of the 150 Newport Center project could be the biggest obstacle for the Museum House proceeding as it is currently proposed.
The 49-unit project at 150 Newport Center wouldn’t fall under Newport Beach’s Greenlight measure—a slow-growth initiative that would trigger a public vote if more than 100 units are proposed for Newport Center.
Related California could avoid a Greenlight vote if it gets approved before the car wash site or trims its plans.
Executives with the 150 Newport Center project said last week that because they have a six-month head start over the Museum House project, they expect to get their approvals first.
They also said they’ve had no interaction with Related California officials over each other’s plans, and that they aren’t interested in selling their land.
