A long-empty office building near John Wayne Airport will soon become a new “Uptown” neighborhood.
The Newport Beach Planning Commission, earlier this month, unanimously approved Lincoln Property Company’s plan to build 100 market-rate townhomes at 1500 Quail St.
The company will tear down an 86,000-square-foot, seven-story office building and its parking lot to build The Residences at 1500 Quail Street. According to the staff report, the project will include 24 townhome buildings across 4.8 acres.
The new homes will offer three or four bedrooms, range from about 1,600 to 1,876 square feet, and come with a two-car garage.
Amenities will feature outdoor dining areas with barbecues and pizza ovens, a lawn for games and open spaces with seating and fountains.
“Our team has taken a lot of time to put together a really thoughtful development that we’re really proud of,” Parke Miller, executive vice president at Lincoln Property, told the planning commission.
A New Uptown
The project is part of a growing trend in Newport Beach’s airport area, where empty office spaces in busy job centers are being turned into new homes. City planners said that the project’s location near major job centers could mean shorter commutes for future residents and more housing where it’s needed.
The Business Journal on March 23rd reported that 14 housing projects totaling nearly 3,000 units are at various stages of approval and development in the airport area. Shopoff Realty Investment and the Picerne Group’s 1,244-unit Uptown Newport mixed-use project was the first major residential project approved in the city’s airport district in 2013, with its first phase finished in 2021.
City planners have started calling this group of new developments in the airport area “Uptown” Newport Beach.
“This is exactly the type of infill development the state is pushing cities toward,” planning officials wrote in the staff report for the 1500 Quail St. project.
Lincoln Property is also planning another office-to-housing conversion at 1300 Dove St., right next to the newly approved 1500 Quail St. project.
The proposed development at 1300 Dove St. will include 132 townhomes, ranging from three to four stories and up to 4 bedrooms.
As part of the Residences’ approval, a dedicated walkway will connect the project at 1300 Dove St.
Affordable Housing Requirements
While the market-rate development is another step toward the city’s meeting state housing requirements, some critics say it lacks a key element: affordable housing.
One speaker told the commission that this is an issue “that’s going to come back and bite us.”
According to city officials, the state is requiring Newport Beach to plan for 4,845 new housing units, with 71% or about 3,436 units reserved for affordable to lower- and moderate-income households.
City staff said the Quail Street project meets the state’s “no net loss” provision because other sites in Newport Beach are set aside for lower-income housing.
