Two of the most prominent parcels of developable land in Anaheim’s Platinum Triangle have gone through changes in ownership, with a shift from condominiums to a 525-unit apartment complex in the works for one of them.
The Newport Beach office of Miami-based LNR Property LLC recently submitted paperwork with the city of Anaheim to rework development plans at a roughly 12.5-acre former industrial site it owns next to Angel Stadium of Anaheim.
The switch to apartments on the site—at the northeast corner of State College Boulevard and East Orangewood Avenue—would depart from bolder hopes first hatched before the recent recession. The former industrial land had initially been expected to hold 878 units for sale—a combination of high-rise condo towers and mid-rise townhouses—under the A-Town Stadium name.
The pending plans for apartments scrap high rises for a less-dense development featuring brownstone-type apartment buildings, said Michael Schlesinger, senior vice president for LNR Property.
The project’s new design would look “a lot different” from the bulk of apartments that have been built in the area the past five years, he said.
Dates haven’t been set for Anaheim’s planning commission to hold hearings on the changes for the project.
“The ball is in their court,” said Sheri Vander Dussen, planning director for the city of Anaheim.
LNR would like to get the project approved by the city in the next six months or so, with ground breaking likely taking place in about a year or so, Schlesinger said.
The A-Town Stadium site is the smaller of two related projects that combine to cover about 53 acres in the Platinum Triangle.
LNR and one-time sister company Lennar Corp., also based in Miami with significant operations in Orange County, reportedly paid $55 million for the 12.5-acre site in 2006.
The two companies also joined forces to buy a larger, 40.6-acre site along Katella Avenue and State College Boulevard that was dubbed A-Town Metro.
A-Town Metro, whose land reportedly cost about $200 million to acquire, was initially expected to hold 2,681 homes and nearly 230,000 square feet of commercial space.
New Arrangement
LNR and homebuilder Lennar held the two A-Town sites under the Platinum Triangle Partners LLC name until last year. Both sites saw changes in their ownership structure late last year.
Lennar, whose day-to-day operations are largely run out of Aliso Viejo, now has the larger A-Town Metro site to itself and is no longer involved in the A-Town Stadium site.
LNR has control over the A-Town Stadium land with no stake in A-Town Metro site, Schlesinger said.
Lennar has not disclosed any changes in development plans for the larger site.
The separation of the joint venture came because each company had different ideas on the best uses for the two sites and decided it would be easier to run the projects separately, sources said.
No money changed hands as part of the changes in ownership of the A-Town sites, Schlesinger said. It is unknown whether either LNR or Lennar brought in other investors as part of the splitting up of the two projects.
The two companies previously underwent a similar change in ownership in the Central Park West residential project near John Wayne Airport in Irvine. Lennar reportedly bought out LNR’s stake in the 50-acre development about a year and a half ago.
Both companies remain investors in Irvine’s massive Great Park Neighborhoods project on the former El Toro Marine base.
LNR began as an operating unit within Lennar but was spun off from the homebuilder in 1997 into its own publicly-traded company. LNR was taken private by Lennar’s chief executive, Stuart Miller, and other large institutional investors in 2005.
The two A-Town projects combined are by far the largest residential developments planned to date for the Platinum Triangle, the roughly 380-acre former industrial area surrounding the baseball stadium. More than 18,000 homes—plus offices, shops and restaurants—have been proposed for the entire area.
About 2,000 residential units have been built in the Platinum Triangle in the last seven years, with a vast majority of them designed or re-configured as for-rent properties amid the struggling for-sale housing market.
Expect to see more sites once eyed as for-sale projects re-worked into rental properties, considering the red-hot market for apartments in OC and elsewhere these days, said Louis Tomaselli, managing partner of Irvine-based brokerage 360 Commercial Partners.
“Apartments are what every institutional owner wants these days,” said Tomaselli, who helped sell a number of the land parcels in the Platinum Triangle to residential developers. “A lot of owners will need to re-entitle their properties.”
