A relatively small stretch of land along Portola Parkway in North Irvine is set to see three competing visions of neighborhood-building move ahead in earnest over the upcoming months.
The area, a mix of rolling hills and fields near the Eastern (133) Toll Road, had been home to one developer for much of the past seven years, as Newport Beach-based Irvine Company built out its 1,222-acre Portola Springs neighborhood along both sides of Portola Parkway.
The sprawling Portola Springs development, which kicked off sales in 2006, was initially expected to feature 4,500 homes built over its first 10 years, but the pace of construction there slowed down during the downturn. There have been about 710 homes sold at Portola Springs to date, according to Irvine Co. representatives.
Construction is still moving ahead. Five builders, including Irvine-based Standard Pacific Homes and William Lyon Homes Inc. of Newport Beach, are selling at Portola Springs, with starting prices for homes there ranging from about $300,000 to almost $1 million.
With signs of life in the local housing market—at least for homes in Irvine—Portola Springs is going to see some competition for buyers at two other nearby projects, each within a stone’s throw of each other.
They include a project slated to be the most expensive housing area in Irvine after Shady Canyon, as well as Great Park Neighbor-hoods, the largest master-planned community in the U.S. to have broken ground in the past five years.
The proximity of the three projects could be a cause for alarm even in a normal housing market. So far developers don’t appear to be fazed.
“You can’t compare Irvine to other markets,” said Emile Haddad, chief executive of FivePoint Communities Management Inc., the Aliso Viejo-based development manager of the Great Park project in Irvine.
“Irvine is benefitting a lot from the school district, from the University (of California, Irvine), from Asian buyers and from cash buyers,” Haddad said at a media briefing in late January. “In Irvine, we believe the market is healthier.”
FivePoint held a Jan. 31 groundbreaking for the first phase of its Great Park Neigh-borhoods, the massive redevelopment project at the former El Toro Marine base.
The 3,700-acre project, which has been in the works for more than six years, calls for about 5,000 homes and 1.2 million square feet of shops, offices and other commercial development to be built in its initial phase.
“I don’t know of another development of this size starting in the last six years,” Haddad said.
It won’t take much of a drive into the expansive Great Park land site to find the first homes.
The first batch of houses going up at the project is expected to be built just down the street from Portola Springs, at the northwest tip of the Great Park Neighborhoods land. Expect to see a heavy dose of infrastructure work—streets, sewers, drains, and other backbone work—move ahead around that area this year, Haddad said.
Different Vibe
The plan is to shape up land slated to hold about 720 homes, so it can be sold to individual builders by the end of the year. The first homes should be ready for sale in about 18 months.
FivePoint expects its homes to give off a different vibe than Irvine Co.’s nearby projects, with a variety of architectural styles and floor plans for the houses, in addition to larger yards, which should appeal to different buyers.
The New Home Co. in Aliso Viejo also has a different target audience—wealthy buyers—in mind for the third big housing project going up on Portola Parkway, Lambert Ranch. The company is moving ahead on a gated community set amid Lambert Ranch’s hills, located between two portions of the Portola Springs site.
The project is expected to hold 169 detached homes.
Groundbreaking on the project was last year; the grand opening of the first model homes at the site is expected in a few months.
Lambert Ranch is envisioned as Irvine’s most expensive housing area after Shady Canyon, said Chief Executive Larry Webb, former chief executive of John Laing Homes.
New Home paid a reported $50 million for the 50-acre family tract of raw and farm land in 2010. The transaction was one of the biggest housing land sales in Orange County in several years, involving one of a few developable chunks of Irvine land not owned by Irvine Co.
The namesake Lambert family—longtime farmland operators in Irvine—owned about a third of the ranch, which the family bought in 1915. Another longtime local farming family and landowner, the Fujishiges, held the rest of the land.
The two families worked to get Lambert Ranch rezoned for housing about six years ago, with an eye on a sale.
Webb started New Home Co. a few years ago with two other one-time John Laing executives—former chief financial officer Wayne Stelmar and Tom Redwitz, who previously ran the homebuilder’s luxury division.
New Home’s fourth partner is Joe Davis, the former head of homebuilding operations for Irvine Co. Davis heads up land acquisitions at New Home and directs strategy for its land-buying business, TNHC Land Co.
