California Apparel News

Orange County in Southern California is still wide-open territory for many retail developers looking to capitalize on the region’s fairly well-to-do consumers.

Right now, they are honing in on the territory around the Great Park of Orange County, an enormous park being charted on the former site of the El Toro Marine Corps base in Irvine, Calif., which closed in 1999.

The base encompassed 4,600 acres of land more than 35 miles south of Los Angeles. Great plans are underway to build a park twice the size of New York’s Central Park. It will be completed in phases over the next 20 years. Surrounding the park will be homes, apartments, schools and a better way of shopping.

At an Oct. 3 panel discussion in Irvine organized by the International Council of Shopping Centers, three developers spoke about their plans for developing stores, houses and offices in the park and on another decommissioned Marine base in Tustin, Calif.

Their retail concepts will differ from the traditional shopping centers and strip malls that dominate the county now, they said.

John T. Tindall, vice president of Aliso Viejo, Calif.–based Shea Properties, is in charge of developing the commercial properties of the Legacy Park, a major project encompassing 820 acres on the site of a former Marine helicopter base called Marine Corps Air Station Tustin. It is eight miles away from the Great Park of Orange County and will be located between the 55, 405 and 5 freeways.

Legacy Park includes not only 200,000 square feet of retail and restaurants but space for 2,100 homes and 6 million square feet of both high-rise and campus office space. The retail portion will have all the ambience of Main Street USA but will look more like Los Angeles’ Melrose Avenue than traditional Orange County. “The challenge here for us is to really build a city—a city that is a bit unique for Orange County,” Tindal said.

The idea is for office tenants not to use their cars but to walk to local restaurants and shops. Shea is looking for unique tenants not already in the market, such as Los Angeles specialty stores not already in Orange County. They hope to entice them with the fact that Orange County’s median family income is around $75,000 a year. The project is scheduled to reach completion after 2010. But the first office building will be open after 2009.

Long-term projects

Another retail project on the horizon is Heritage Fields, a 10-year development with several components being developed by LNR Property Corp., based in Miami. These several components of Heritage Fields will surround the area of the Great Park of Orange County.

Construction has not started for Heritage Fields’ retail on Main Street, but Bryan Miranda, the LNR vice president in charge of its development, said it will feature non-major national retailers and unique restaurants.

Another component of the LNR project is the Transit Oriented Development District with 75,000 square feet of retail around Amtrak and MetroLink stations. The project will also include 1,500 residential units and 1.6 million square feet of office space.

A third ingredient in the Heritage Fields project is the Lifelong Learning District, centered around campuses for elementary schools and high schools, as well as public and private colleges.

LNR is also responsible for planning and developing the park’s top attractions, such as botanical gardens, hiking trails and a sports park.

The Long Beach, Calif.–based Vestar Development Co.’s contribution to retail nearby at the Great Park in Orange County is a continuation of its District at Tustin Legacy shopping center, which opened this summer. The District is a 1 million-square-foot lifestyle center at the northwest corner of Jamboree Road and Barranca Parkway in Tustin. The District already boasts tenants such as surf and skate shops Beach Bums and Zumiez and rock-fashion mecca Hot Topic. It also has some big-box names such as Target, Lowe’s and Costco. A Best Buy store will be constructed on the property by November 2008. For its lifestyle segment, Jeffrey M. Axtell, project director at Vestar, said there will be theaters, restaurants and shops. While these developers were bullish about building shopping centers in a weakening economy—The District is 100 percent leased—they will also have the challenge of opening their projects in a very crowded mall market.

There are more than 12 major malls within a 10-mile circle in central Orange County. Those include popular, established shopping centers such as The Irvine Spectrum in Irvine, South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa and Fashion Island in Newport Beach.

One Orange County retail pioneer believes these developers can find success. But they must give Orange County consumers something different.

Shaheen Sadeghi, president of The Lab and The Camp specialty shopping centers in Costa Mesa, said the county needs more specialty retail streets that capture the spirit of their locale.

“In terms of national tenants being represented here,” Sadeghi said, “we’re covered.”