A Santa Ana site eyed for a pair of high-rise condominium towers during the boom is back on the market with a more modest development plan now envisioned.
Land brokers for Irvine’s Park Place Land Advisors are marketing a 5.2-acre site for sale at one of Santa Ana’s more visible locations across the street from the Xerox Centre office tower on East First Street.
The property’s part of 200 acres of mostly commercial land in the area between the Costa Mesa (55) and Santa Ana (I-5) freeways that the city of Santa Ana has been working on in the past few years to rezone for homes and other uses.
The 5 acres up for sale—at First Street and Cabrillo Park Drive—once were expected to be the first part of that redevelopment effort.
In early 2007, Santa Ana’s City Council gave a nod to the development of two condo towers at the site. The project, to be built by Newport Beach-based NDC Development, was slated to hold 374 homes, ground-floor stores and a rooftop swimming pool.
NDC Development, an affiliate of homebuilder Capital Pacific Holdings of Newport Beach, reportedly paid $20.1 million for the property in 2006. The property includes an older, 167,000-square-foot office building that’s now empty.
The developer no longer is in control of the property. The Santa Ana site is being sold by its lender, Emigrant Realty Finance LLC, the commercial real estate arm of New York-based Emigrant Savings Bank.
The land’s still being marketed as a potential housing site, although high-rises are no longer being considered, according to Mike Hunter, a senior marketing consultant for Park Place, which is handling the listing for Emigrant’s Los Angeles office.
A more likely option at this point is for a builder to put up 120 or so three-story townhomes on the site, he said.
The city has been in discussions with the lender over the fate of the property, according to Jay Trevino, executive director for Santa Ana’s planning department. Any major changes to the development plans would require city approval, he said.
Bids are currently being accepted for the First Street property, and a deal could be reached soon, according to Park Place’s Hunter.
The giveback of the land is a blow to Capital Pacific and its affiliates, which have seen a number of hits in the economic downturn. Another Capital Pacific offshoot is Newport Beach’s Makar Properties LLC, which was in the news last year when it lost ownership of two local hotels, including the upscale St. Regis Resort Monarch Beach in Dana Point.
The bank’s asking price for the Santa Ana property isn’t being disclosed. Based on the few land sales taking place in OC of late, it looks doubtful that the bank will get a price close to what was paid for the site in 2006.
Among larger recent deals, Santa Ana-based City Ventures LLC last month reached an agreement to buy a 25-acre site on Jamboree Road, near the Irvine city line with Newport Beach for $26.1 million, or about $1 million per acre.
That sale, made with Newport Beach’s Conexant Systems Inc., also includes two leased buildings that total more than 450,000 square feet of space. About 17 acres of the site has been eyed as a location for housing development.
