High Tech Is Coming to Last of Land Grants : 400-Acre Center Being Built at Dominguez Hill

Rising 214 feet above the coastal plains, the plateau of Dominguez Hill gently overlooks the Palos Verdes Peninsula and San Pedro Bay. Though much of this land is undeveloped, it has deep ties to history: It is the last large vacant parcel of California’s first Spanish land grant, which has for nine generations remained in the family of pioneer settler Juan Jose Dominguez.

In 1784, the King of Spain gave the property to Dominguez, a veteran Spanish soldier, as part of a 75,000-acre land grant called Rancho San Pedro.

Now, 201 years later, high tech is about to alter the barren plateau dramatically.

Dominguez Properties, the family-run company that owns most of the hill, on Thursday unveiled the first phase of a 400-acre high-technology center that company officials believe will be one of the largest in Southern California when it is completed in about 15 years.

Dominguez Properties is a limited partnership in which Watson Land Co. and Carson Estate Co. are general partners and 85 Dominguez heirs are limited partners. Both Watson Land and Carson Estate, privately held corporations, also are owned by Dominguez heirs.

“We have farmed that land over the last 200 years, and, during the last 60 years, it’s been used for oil drilling,” said Edward Carson Scheller, 63, a seventh-generation descendant of Dominguez. “I think it’s time for a change. . . . It has to be developed in one manner or another.”

The newly planned high-tech complex, known as the Dominguez Technology Centre, is estimated to cost more than $1 billion when fully constructed and is being billed as a summit of research, manufacturing and distribution for aerospace and port-related high-technology industries. It will include both light industry and office space.

Land at the high-technology center is being leased to firms that may either construct their own facilities or have them built by Dominguez Properties, which has so far paid cash for all its project costs. The firm said it expects no problems getting financing for the rest of the project.

Lease prices are based on the market value for the area--$10 to $11 a square foot--and the location of each parcel.

Situated beside California State University, Dominguez Hills, the high-technology center also is expected to foster an exchange of research and labor between the college campus and the estimated 100 firms that will eventually occupy the unenclosed, landscaped complex. Initial planning work on the development, located between four freeways, began three years ago.

The first phase of the project--a 50-acre southeast corner of the site--includes $1.5 million in street improvements and utilities and six buildings, four of which are up or under construction.

Those leases have been signed by Multiquip, Radio Assay Systems Laboratories, Saga International, Samsung Electronics America and Midland Warehouse & Distribution. Combined costs for building currently under construction or recently built totals more than $13 million.

The second phase of the project--another 50 acres that also is located in unincorporated Rancho Dominguez--is expected to be completed by the end of 1986.

However, to construct the rest of its sprawling development--about 300 acres of the project will be located in the city of Carson--Dominguez Properties must submit for approval by Carson officials a comprehensive, restrictive development program called a “specific plan.” The company would be bound to follow the details of the plan unless it petitioned for an amendment.

So far, the company has not submitted the document because it says the detailed plan would restrict its ability to respond quickly to the wishes of prospective lessees. About three months ago, Dominguez Properties lost an appeal of the requirement before the Carson Planning Commission. It plans to appeal that decision to the Carson City Council.

Carson staff maintains that the development restrictions are necessary to protect the comprehensive and high-quality development of its largest remaining vacant property.

Whatever the outcome on the development requirement, it will not affect progress on the project, insisted Matthew Vanderhorst, director of marketing and development for Dominguez Properties.