A vacant car dealership along Harbor Boulevard in Costa Mesa, once tagged for housing redevelopment, has a new automotive tenant who plans a big makeover in an expansion of its nearby operations.
Suburban Harbor LLC, an affiliate of the Troy, Mich.-based owner of Orange Coast Buick GMC Cadillac in Costa Mesa, recently closed on the purchase of a 3.7-acre commercial site at the northeast corner of the Harbor Boulevard and Merrimac Way. Waterpointe Homes LLC sold the property—situated a few blocks from Orange Coast College—for a reported $6.5 million.
The site, at 2626 Harbor Blvd., is across the street from the buyer’s existing dealership. Together the two sites comprise about 600 yards of dealership space along Harbor Boulevard, which counts several other big car dealerships along a busy retail corridor just west of the San Diego (I-405) Freeway.
25,000 SF
The property, which includes 25,000 square feet of retail and auto service space, had been vacant for more than a year after the closure of Costa Mesa Lincoln Mercury after 18 years at the site. Orange Coast has begun putting its vehicles on the site but reportedly has bigger plans in store for the recently acquired land.
Executives at the Suburban Collection, the Michigan-based parent company of the Orange Coast dealership, are said to be considering developing the site and the adjacent property into a higher-profile, flagship Cadillac store, according to several sources. Such a project would aspire to match the prominence of Newport Beach dealerships such as Fletcher Jones Motorcars and Newport Lexus.
Details
Project details are in the design stage, and dealership officials declined to elaborate other than confirming their intent to develop the site further. Costa Mesa planning commission officials last week said they have heard about potential proposals for the site but to date have received no submissions for review.
A move to expand the Cadillac dealer’s Costa Mesa operations ends a one-year effort to turn the commercial site into a housing project.
Local homebuilder and developer Waterpointe Homes, under Chief Executive Garrett Calacci, bought the site immediately after the Lincoln Mercury dealership closed.
The late 2010 acquisition involved a bit of fate, said Calacci, whose company builds homes in infill locations, primarily in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.
Fender-Bender
Calacci took his car to the Lincoln Mercury site for repairs after getting involved in a fender-bender, only to find the store shuttered. A chance meeting with the property’s owner at that time set up the sale, which occurred before the property was officially put on the market, he said.
After initially considering an apartment complex, Waterpointe’s redevelopment plan—which won city approval—was to raze the site and put up a 33-home gated community at the location. Homes were slated to run about 2,100 square feet.
Change of Fortune
Construction initially was slated to begin in February, but another bit of fortune steered the property back to an automotive use.
Suburban Collection—which operates about 40 dealerships, primarily in Michigan—bought the nearby former South Coast Cadillac dealership last fall and rebranded the operation as Orange Coast.
