The developer tapped to turn 820 acres of Tustin’s former Marine base into business, shops and homes said it plans to pull out of the stalled megaproject.
“We are working with the city for an exit,” said Colm Macken of Tustin Legacy Community Partners LLC, which was slated to redevelop part of the former base as Legacy Park.
Macken also is chief executive of Aliso Viejo-based Shea Properties, a unit of Walnut’s J.F. Shea Co.
Shea Properties and sister company Shea Homes are the driving forces behind Tustin Legacy Community Partners.
Tustin Legacy Community Partners has worked on the project with the city of Tustin, which took over the former base in 1999.
The end of a development pact with Tustin could be finalized by early summer or sooner, according to Macken. The financial implications of terminating the deal still are being worked out, he said.
The Shea project was set to take up about half of the 1,500-acre former Marine helicopter base.
Legacy Park called for 2,100 homes and 6.7 million square feet of offices, restaurants, shops and hotels. When the development deal was signed in 2006, it was expected the project—valued at the time at $3 billion—would go up in earnest during the next six to eight years.
The real estate downturn that started in 2007 quickly put the timetable in doubt, with no significant work completed to date.
“It’s a casualty of the economy,” Macken said.
It’s unclear what Tustin’s next step will be once Shea leaves the project.
“No one wants this to be a hostile kind of closure,” said Christine Shingleton, Tustin’s assistant city manager. “But it’s time to move on.”
For more on this story, see the April 26 edition of the Business Journal.
