Regency Centers Corp., a Jacksonville, Fla.-based builder and owner of shopping centers, is the latest developer tapped for new construction at the 820-acre former Marine helicopter base in Tustin.
The Tustin City Council last week gave the go-ahead for the city to enter exclusive negotiations with Regency to build a retail center near the eastern edge of the Tustin Legacy development site.
The property would be built near the intersection of Edinger Road and the under-construction extension of Tustin Ranch Road, which is expected to be completed in mid-2013.
The space could hold a retail and medical office project in the 185,000-square-foot range, according to prior city documents.
The project would likely include stores and restaurants targeting area residents of nearby neighborhoods like Columbus Square, rather than the larger big-box stores and national chains seen at the nearby District at Tustin Legacy site.
City documents suggest the project could open as early as 2015.
Regency counts eight other sites in Orange County totaling about 1.5 million square feet. Prominent locations include the recently renovated Heritage Plaza center in Irvine and the Amerige Heights Town Center in Fullerton.
The negotiations with Regency add to a string of prospective deals for Tustin Legacy announced in recent months.
Irvine-based Standard Pacific Corp. last month was selected to build up to 238 homes on a 51-acre parcel at Tustin Legacy.
The housing site is located near Jamboree Road north of Warner Avenue, and construction there could start in about a year.
“The city of Tustin cited the strength of our community designs and development plan, as well as our legacy of building move-up communities in the local market as major reasons for selecting Standard Pacific Homes over our competition,” Scott Stowell, chief executive of the builder, said in a call with analysts late last month.
Stowell described the negotiations with Tustin as “a very competitive [request for proposals] process.”
Tustin’s city council also recently selected the Newport Beach-based Irvine Co. and St. Anton Partners in Sacramento to build apartments on a pair of land parcels at Tustin Legacy.
“Progress is happening at Tustin Legacy,” Mayor John Nielsen said last month, at the time a deal with Standard Pacific was struck.
Tustin also remains in closed-door negotiations with Irvine-based Broadcom Corp. over a possible new campus for the chip-making giant, according to city records. Negotiations have been under way since late last year over a possible office campus that could run close to 1 million square feet.
CLW Adds
The Newport Beach office of CLW Real Estate Services Group, a Tampa-based real estate firm that counts an active tenant representation business among other business lines, has added a big area brokerage name to its roster.
The company recently brought on Oliver Fleener as a senior vice president and director of office services for CLW’s West Coast operations.
Fleener counts 16 years of brokerage experience, including a 10-year stint with Grubb & Ellis Co.—now called Newmark Grubb Knight Frank—where he was a senior vice president of leasing and sales.
Recent transactions he’s worked on include leasing up the recently built 1375 Dove St. office building in Newport Beach, which was built by Santa Ana-based Far West Industries a few years ago next to an older building Far West owns at 1401 Dove.
A five-year lease announced last month with All American Lending Inc. brings the two-building Dove Street campus, which totals about 98,000 square feet, to 100% occupancy.
Fleener joins several other local CLW executives who previously held executive roles at Grubb & Ellis.
Those include Tim Joyce, who joined CLW earlier this year as a principal for the West Coast office, and Craig Morris, another CLW principal who joined the company in 2010.
Along with tenant rep work, CLW’s local office offers corporate services, consulting and acquisitions and dispositions capabilities.
CLW’s office in Newport Beach is affiliated with locally based Axxcess Capital LLC and Axxcess Realty Advisors LLC, a pair of real estate and alternative investments companies whose principals include the founders of Argus Realty Investors, a tenant-in-common investor whose operations were taken over by Irvine-based Thomson National Properties LLC in 2008.
Colorado Buys
Newport Beach-based MIG Real Estate LLC has bought a pair of apartment complexes in the suburbs of Denver, totaling 600 units.
Terms of the sales, for the Hamptons and Huntington complexes, were not disclosed. The purchases are the fifth and sixth acquisitions for MIG Real Estate in Colorado.
