The last parcel of undeveloped land at the Irvine Concourse is spoken for, after a sale by one of Orange County’s wealthier residents.
Property records indicate that Fieldstead & Co., a business headed by Newport Beach philanthropist Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., sold the 1.6-acre lot at 17931 Von Karman Ave. for $10.8 million, or $6.9 million per acre, to San Diego developer PMB Real Estate Services.
The 67,953-square-foot vacant lot is set to make way for a convalescent hospital, joining a bevy of healthcare-related facilities in the works for the area.
The entitled development site is about a block from the intersection of Von Karman Avenue and Main Street, roughly a mile from the airport.
Ahmanson, a member of prior Business Journal OC’s Wealthiest lists, is the son of the late Howard Ahmanson Sr., founder of Home Savings and Loan.
68K-SF Project
The sale comes about five months after UCI Health and Kindred Rehabilitation Services (KRS) announced a joint venture to develop the facility, designed to run 68,000 square feet and include 52 beds.
The Business Journal in February was first to report on the planned hospital development.
The inpatient rehabilitation hospital will employ up to 200 people, with KRS managing operations and UCI Health providing physicians and clinical staff. The facility aims to treat patients recovering from conditions such as stroke, traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, as well as trauma, burn and orthopedic patients, according to UCI and KRS, an affiliate of Brentwood, Tenn.-based LifePoint Health.
The property is the last parcel of undeveloped land at the Irvine Concourse, the 48-acre campus alongside the San Diego (405) Freeway that holds a collection of office buildings, hotels, restaurants and an Equinox gym.
$80M Cost
The project, with an estimated $80 million development cost, is expected to begin construction soon and deliver by late 2025.
It expands UCI Health’s inpatient rehabilitation capacity, which currently includes 14 rehabilitation beds at the UCI Medical Center in Orange.
“The new rehabilitation hospital will be more than just a patient care facility, it will enable clinicians to conduct clinical research, including clinical trials, and advance new rehabilitation technologies to improve healing for patients and help them return to their lives following surgeries and inpatient treatment,” Jay Han, chief of physical medicine and rehabilitation for UCI Health and the medical center’s rehabilitation medical director, said in a statement.
UCI Health-Irvine
On Jamboree Road, a couple miles away from the Von Karman development site,
the University of California, Irvine and UCI Health are well underway with a new medical complex on a nearly 25-acre site on the north end of the university’s campus.
The three-building complex, with an estimated cost of $1.3 billion, will include a 144-bed, 350,000-square-foot acute care hospital with an emergency room, the Joe C. Wen & Family Center for Advanced Care, a five-story facility that will run 168,000 square feet and offer adult and pediatric specialty care, urgent care, digestive health neurosciences and comprehensive laboratory and radiology imaging services in one location, a Center for Children’s Health and the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and Ambulatory Care building.
The outpatient Center for Advanced Care and Center for Children’s Health will see their first patients in 2023, and the hospital and cancer center will open in 2025, according to the school.
