Segerstrom to Purchase Scout Property : More Parking, Restaurants Planned for South Coast Village

The Boy Scouts may have done the good deed that could speed up plans to turn South Coast Village into a restaurant mecca.

Under an agreement expected to be signed this week, real estate developer C. J. Segerstrom & Sons of Costa Mesa has agreed to purchase the Boy Scouts of America’s county headquarters adjacent to South Coast Village in Santa Ana. Segerstrom intends to knock down the Scout building within 18 months and use the site for parking, paving the way for more restaurants at the Village.

Restaurants already are among the most successful operations at the 42-store Village, drawing up-scale office workers in for lunch. Segerstrom believes more eating places will improve business at the Village.

The development company has been grappling with the Village’s image since it opened in 1973. The Village, situated on Sunflower Avenue between Bristol and Bear streets, has played second fiddle to neighboring South Coast Plaza, where business is brisk both day and night.

Evolving Business Center

As the vicinity evolves into the county’s new business center, Segerstrom believes that adding more restaurants with greater variety will reshape the Village as a destination dinner spot.

But under Santa Ana city code, additional restaurants at the Village will require more parking, said Jim Henwood, general manager of both South Coast Plaza and South Coast Village. “Once we solve the parking problem, then we can look at restaurants,” said Henwood. “The Village is a restaurant service center, and we’ll continue to market it as such.”

Last April, the Segerstrom company announced a revitalization plan for the Village but did not specify what the changes would be. Now, Henwood said, restaurants are at the center of those plans. The most likely location for new restaurants at the Village is the 15,000-square-foot Mercantile Building, which has sat virtually empty for more than a year.

Restaurant owners say that although the $6.2-million outdoor shopping center has been a popular lunch spot for local business people, the dinner hour is generally quiet at best and dismal at worst. Managers at two of seven current eateries say they would not object to more competition at the Village.

“It could be a very good thing for us,” said Charlene Rinkuns, manager of the 170-seat Good Earth, which employs 50. “If they decide to promote the Village with more restaurants, it could bring us more night business. We could use more dinner traffic,” she said.

‘It Won’t Hurt Us’

At Upstart Crow & Co., Sherry Helton, general manager of the combined bookstore and cafe, looks favorably on the proposed changes. “It might hurt one or two individual restaurants, but it won’t hurt us,” she said. Business at the 175-seat restaurant was up 40% in 1984 compared to 1983. The proposed changes “would probably do a lot of good for the Village,” she said.

In exchange for the two-acre site, Segerstrom will give the Boy Scouts a larger lot at the corner of MacArthur Boulevard and Harbor Gateway North in Costa Mesa. The Scouts also will receive a second lot at another location, which it will sell to a local church for $1 million to help pay for construction of a new headquarters.

Under current plans, the Boy Scouts would vacate current quarters in mid-1986 and move to the new location, according to Buford Hill, director of the Orange County Scout Council. With 16,000 member Scouts, the Orange County chapter is the seventh largest in the nation, he said.

“We’re crammed in here now,” said Hill. “We have to do something.” A staff of 64 now works in a building that had 15 employees when it opened, he said. The proposed 20,000-square-foot Scout building will be twice the size of the current structure, Hill said.

Negotiations between the Boy Scouts and Segerstrom for the property have taken place for several years, Hill said. The two-acre site formerly belonged to Howard Bear, who donated it to the Boy Scouts in 1964. The Hoag Foundation later built the structure as a gift to the Boy Scouts.

Hill said the Boy Scouts still must raise an additional $900,000 to pay for the new headquarters, which is being designed by the Blurock Partnership of Newport Beach. Ground breaking is expected to be this summer, he added.