There are signs of life—and opportunity—for owners of retail properties in Orange County.
Last week saw the latest reopening of South Coast Plaza during the pandemic, with more than 100 shops and 20 restaurants now in operation, just in time for the Labor Day holiday.
A few miles away, fellow Costa Mesa retail center SOCO and the OC Mix are seeing more eateries and stores reopen; see Christopher Trela’s dining column beginning on page 15 for more on Greenleaf Kitchen & Cocktails, ARC Food + Libations and others that are now drawing crowds to the center.
Newport Beach’s Burnham Ward Properties, SOCO’s developer, has more in store elsewhere in OC.
CEO and Partner Scott Burnham told the Business Journal last week that his firm just closed on the purchase of Mission Viejo Gateway, a three-building retail and office complex along Crown Valley Parkway, near the entrances to the Shops at Mission Viejo.
At $16 million, it’s the largest reported retail deal to close in OC since March, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
Expect a major redevelopment of the site—now holding an OfficeMax, a multi-tenant retail building and a separate bank building—“sooner rather than later,” says Burnham, who is coy on plans for the site for the time being.
Other projects he and partner Bryon Ward have headed of late include Castaway Commons in Newport Beach and the Long Beach Exchange shopping center next to that city’s airport.
Foothill Ranch’s loanDepot, the nation’s second largest non-bank mortgage lender, says it plans to hire “hundreds more workers” via a virtual job fair on Sept. 9.
While the company beefs up, founder and CEO Anthony Hsieh slimmed down after a recent health scare.
“I’m 23 lbs. lighter post-COVID and gaining strength,” he said in a LinkedIn post last month about catching the illness in early July. “No matter how careful we are, this virus sneaks its way into your life, and it kicked my behind.”
He said he wasn’t hospitalized, but “for the first time in my life, I was scared for my health.”
“The good news is that I’m now at my high school weight, have a gorgeous 6-pack, and I get to eat double-doubles everyday with no guilt,” he quipped.
The cold-chain logistics sector is heating up.
Shares of Cyroport Inc. (Nasdaq: CYRX), which provides temperature-controlled supply chain services for the life sciences industry, have nearly doubled since mid-August, to a market value of $2.1 billion.
That boost would be enough to place the firm No. 14 among OC public companies by market cap—had the firm not moved its headquarters from Irvine to Brentwood, Tenn. earlier this year.
It still retains some 27,000 square feet of local corporate, research and development, and logistics facilities; Irvine still counts the company’s largest base of operations, and it continues to hire locally.
The stock boost came after a $275M investment from Blackstone Group and the $320M acquisition of a maker of cryogenic freezer systems.
For more on OC adding another locally based public company to its ranks, see Katie Murar’s front-page story on homebuilder Landsea Homes of Newport Beach.
