New owners plan offices, retail and food hall at former L.A. Times property in Costa Mesa

The new owners of the former Los Angeles Times plant in Costa Mesa say they are looking to redevelop the property with a mix of creative office space, retail and a food hall.

SteelWave LLC and Invesco Real Estate — which acquired the shuttered facility as part of a $65-million deal this month — said Monday that the plan would cover about 420,000 square feet.

And, they said, because the land is entitled for about 650,000 square feet of development, they would still have 230,000 square feet for future use.

SteelWave and Invesco acquired the plant at 1375 Sunflower Ave. and an adjacent lot with a baseball field at 3370 Harbor Blvd. Combined, the parcels make a “T” shape and contain about 25 acres.

SteelWave, which owns the Hive complex next door that’s home to the Los Angeles Chargers’ headquarters, approached the Times plant’s previous owners, Tribune Real Estate Holdings and Kearny Real Estate Co., earlier this year about acquiring the property.

The deal is the first partnership between SteelWave and Invesco, a global real estate investment manager.

Tribune Real Estate and Kearny had planned to pump $100 million into revamping the facility. They promoted it as The Press, a 340,000-square-foot creative office complex that would pay homage to the property’s history as a newsroom and newspaper printing plant.

Jonathan Hastanan, SteelWave’s vice president of acquisitions and development, said Monday that his team hasn’t decided whether to stick with The Press name.

However, he said in a statement that “this will be an iconic project that pays tribute to the history of the building by embracing its character, making it unique to the region.”

The Times opened its Costa Mesa plant in the late 1960s. At its peak, it printed about 250,000 newspapers daily and housed about 1,000 employees.

The property essentially has been vacant since fall 2014, when The Times and Daily Pilot staff moved to an office building in Fountain Valley.

bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint