The Automobile Club of Southern California (AAA), one of Orange County’s largest private companies, says it has long-term expansion plans in the works for its Costa Mesa headquarters.
The largest member of the AAA federation of motor clubs, the Auto Club of SoCal last month reached a deal with the city of Costa Mesa to extend a prior, soon-to-expire development agreement that allows for a new, 250,000-square-foot office building to be built at its nearly 30-acre campus on Fairview Drive, just north of the San Diego (405) Freeway, near the city’s Ikea.
The proposed Auto Club expansion, which would go up near the corner of South Coast Drive and Fairview Avenue, would also include a four-level parking structure with more than 1,800 parking stalls.
Such an addition would bring the Auto Club campus’ size to 967,000 square feet of building space and 2,976 total parking spaces, city records indicate.
New CEO Plans Expansion
The new building, along with existing facilities, would accommodate over 3,900 Auto Club staff when built out, filings indicate. The company currently employs 2,940 local workers, making it Costa Mesa’s largest employer.
The Automobile Club of Southern California ranks No. 4 among OC’s largest private employers, with $7.6 billion in revenue last year, according to Business Journal data.
The regional AAA division counts about 15 million members, representing nearly 30% of AAA nationwide membership.
The group saw a change in leadership earlier this year, with the retirement of President and CEO John Boyle, who led the company for seven years.
He was succeeded by Greg Backley, who previously served as the Auto Club’s Chief Operating Officer.
Pandemic Recovery
Don’t expect construction on the new phase of development to begin anytime soon; the extended agreement with the city runs through 2024, and the company notes its local operations are smaller than they were five years ago.
City filings note that in 2019, the company’s Costa Mesa campus was reaching capacity, with over 3,000 on-site workers each day.
When the pandemic hit, only about 600 workers used the campus on a day-to-day basis, and work-from-home plans have continued. Last year, about two-thirds of its local base used the campus every day, filings indicate.
Dispose Smaller Sites
The Costa Mesa office has benefitted from some Auto Club consolidation efforts post-pandemic. Work from home strategies “provided substantial surplus space across our portfolio. Through our facilities utilization process, we looked to dispose of smaller regional sites while strengthening our Costa Mesa operations,” the company told the city.
The Costa Mesa campus, in use for over 30 years, was originally developed for both call center operations and back office administrative support.
“Many of the call center operations have downsized and have implemented ‘work from home’ strategies,” the company noted in city filings. “This has allowed for growth in higher paying technology and management positions that are primarily in the office.”
467K-SF Not Enough
A spokesperson for the Auto Club noted that there’s no near-term timeline for new construction.
“We do not have any specific plans currently, other than to first provide adequate free parking for our employees and vendors when the campus reaches full capacity,” spokesperson Marie Montgomery Nordues told the Business Journal in an email.
The automobile services and insurance company’s Costa Mesa footprint currently includes a processing center, satellite building, 467,000-square-foot service center/warehouse and 1,010 parking stalls.
