The Segerstrom family has proposed one of its largest commercial real estate developments in years, for the reworking of its Lake Center Office Park and adjacent land in Santa Ana.
C.J Segerstrom & Sons submitted plans to the city of Santa Ana to demolish its roughly 10-acre, three-building, office complex—at 3100, 3110 and 3120 W. Lake Center Drive—to make way for three new industrial buildings that will take up the existing business park and an empty, 5.6-acre lot it owns next to the office park on Susan Street.
The estimated cost of the project, dubbed South Coast Technology Center, tops $126 million, according to officials.
The trio of new buildings will total about 300,000 square feet of corporate and industrial space on nearly 16 acres of land.
The new development reflects the changes in the area’s office market of late, officials said.
“The existing facilities were designed more than 30 years ago and no longer meet the needs of today’s companies,” South Coast Technology Center Community Liaison Marice DePasquale told the Business Journal in an email.
The proposed project features “much greater flexibility in the types of uses that can be accommodated, such as office, labs [and] R&D … rather than pure office space.”
Additionally, the “proposal addresses post-pandemic corporate needs for companies unable to work remotely to attract an energized workforce and increase the property tax base for Santa Ana.”
Lake Center’s existing three building total 180,000 square feet.
Doubling Up
C.J. Segerstrom & Sons runs some of Costa Mesa’s most valuable commercial properties, including South Coast Plaza, the country’s largest luxury shopping center. Its extensive real estate portfolio also includes numerous sites in Santa Ana.
The site for South Coast Technology Center is less than 2 miles west of South Coast Plaza, which is adjacent to its South Coast Plaza Village shopping center in Santa Ana, where a separate redevelopment project has been proposed by the family.
The family’s firm submitted plans for a mixed-use project, dubbed The Village Santa Ana, in August. The Village includes 1,583 residential units, up to 300,000 square feet of office and up to 80,000 square feet of retail space.
Early Interest
There’s already interest in South Coast Technology Center, though the project doesn’t have any tenants, DePasquale said.
Officials expect South Coast Technology Center to be ready for new tenants in 2025, assuming the project gets approved and progresses according to timeline.
South Coast Technology Center “will be an extension of the Segerstrom family’s high-quality work and legacy over the last 125 years—promoting community-centered investments that support local organizations, create local jobs and encourage successful business development,” officials said in city filings.
Current tenants of Lake Center Office Park include UnitedHealth Group and OC 405 Partners, according to CoStar Group Inc. data. One of the three buildings is vacant, according to the real estate market tracker.
Revamped Space
Buildings for the proposed South Coast Technology Center will not only be larger than the site’s current structures, they will also have amenities that appeal to in-person employees.
Parking that wraps around the buildings for convenience, patios, outdoor hangout and meeting spaces are some “features that have been taken into consideration about how people want to work now when they’re back in the office,” DePasquale said during a September community meeting discussing the project.
Office Market
The proposal for South Coast Technology Center would add another office-to-industrial proposal to Orange County, which has seen several similar large projects since the pandemic.
The development site is a few blocks away from Elevate @ Harbor, a two-building, 197,370-square-foot office along Harbor Boulevard, near the San Diego (405) Freeway.
That project’s owners said in March it would knock the offices at that site down, to make way for an industrial project spanning 163,000 square feet.
The Segerstrom’s proposed project is also a few blocks north of Anduril Industries’ massive new campus in Costa Mesa, which includes a mix of creative office space and industrial buildings used for R&D.
Village Santa Ana
South Coast Technology Center is the Segerstrom family’s second big, proposed development this year.
The first, The Village, comes after decades of inactivity on the family’s development side.
Assuming the mix of properties for The Village fit in with the high-end aesthetics of the Segerstroms’ shopping center and collection of nearby office towers run under the South Coast Plaza Office Division name, that development when complete could approach $1.5 billion in value, the Business Journal estimates.
Renderings of The Village indicate a mix of low-rise, mid-rise and high-rise buildings are under consideration for the project.
