Irvine Business Complex Vs. South Coast Metro : Commercial Hubs Vie for Business
Orange County, long characterized as 26 cities in search of a downtown, now has two areas vying for the title, with each contender backed by its own alliance of high-powered developers.
Two years after C.J. Segerstrom & Sons formed the South Coast Metro Alliance to market the area near South Coast Plaza as a prestige business address, developers of competing office space near the John Wayne Airport--including the Koll Co. and the Irvine Co.--are launching their own marketing alliance.
Although the business districts are separated only by the airport and the Costa Mesa Freeway, they will be promoted regionally and nationally as distinct markets.
Public relations campaigns featuring geographical areas rather than single developments--although common among residential developers--are new to commercial builders in Orange County.
Office Space on the Market
Real estate analysts say cooperation among developers who otherwise compete head to head in the market is warranted by the huge amount of new office space coming on the Orange County market, where vacancies already are approaching 20%. And brokers say a “downtown” image is important to potential corporate tenants, who usually want to be “where the action is.”
“It is the smartest marketing ploy they can use,” real estate analyst Sanford Goodkin said of the county’s new regional marketing alliances.
The older alliance, consisting of 15 developers and businesses, is promoting a 3.5-square-mile area, straddling the cities of Costa Mesa and Santa Ana, which they are calling South Coast Metro.
Bidding for recognition of that territory as the county’s emerging downtown, the South Coast Metro Alliance points to the 5.2 million square feet of office space now in the area and the 7.3 million additional square feet yet to be built.
South Coast Metro also boasts hotels and restaurants, South Coast Plaza--the West Coast’s leading shopping mall--and cultural amenities such as the South Coast Repertory Theatre, movie houses and the Orange County Performing Arts Center, which is scheduled to open next fall.
But 10 rival developers with office and hotel projects in Irvine and Newport Beach are now predicting that Orange County’s downtown instead will be known as the Irvine Business Complex, planned as a large concentration of office buildings, hotels, restaurants, shops and movie houses lying roughly east of the Costa Mesa Freeway, south of Barranca Road, west of Jamboree Boulevard and north of Bristol Street.
While the Irvine Business Complex’s promoters concede that they have nothing comparable to the Performing Arts Center or South Coast Plaza, they say the area can beat South Coast Metro hands down in the sheer amount of office space, with 15 million square feet already built and millions more planned or under construction.
The new group--led by Koll, the Irvine Co. and Trammell Crow Co., a Dallas-based developer that recently purchased the Fluor Corp.’s 162-acre property--has hired Amies Advertising and Public Relations, an Irvine-based agency, to put together brochures and fact sheets touting the attributes of the Irvine Business Complex, with the belief that such materials will enhance leasing in their individual projects.
Wide Range of Brochures
The Irvine Business Alliance is following in the footsteps of the South Coast Metro Alliance, which already has hired a full-time public relations director, printed a wide range of colorful informational brochures and developed an audio-visual show to tout what it has to offer.
“Orange County is waking up to the fact that we need to market ourselves,” said William Lane Jr., a partner with Trammell Crow, which has projects in both South Coast Metro and the Irvine Business Complex and is active in both alliances.
Jim Bell, sales manager of the Newport Beach office of Coldwell Banker, said one of the most useful sales tools he has received from the South Coast Metro Alliance is a bird’s-eye rendering of all the development projects planned in the area--something that would be difficult for an individual developer to provide.
Neither alliance so far has done much in the way of advertising, instead focusing its attention initially on informing brokers and the press.
Officers of both groups say they have small budgets. In both alliances, developers contribute funds according to the amount of existing and planned construction they have in the area.
Alliances’ Budgets
While the South Coast Metro Alliance refuses to reveal the exact size of its budget, Tony Hatch, creative director for Amies, said the agency so far has only $150,000 to spend--primarily on compiling information into a four-color brochure.
Hatch said plans for a major regional and then a national media advertising campaign later this year will depend on additional financing being solicited from airlines, restaurants and hotels.
Nonetheless, he said, the Irvine Business Complex will have its first advertisement later this month in the Airport Business Journal, a monthly periodical distributed to 15,000 firms in the vicinity of John Wayne Airport.
Goodkin said that although a “war of giants” seems to be brewing in the county, pitting one high-rise office area against another, the outcome will be mutually beneficial because it will broadcast the message of Orange County’s new urban image to the national brokerage community.
Centers of a Urban Hub
Members of both alliances say they hope to begin attracting more out-of-state corporations to their projects identifying them as the centers of an urban hub.
In the past Orange County has relied almost entirely on the expansion of home-grown businesses to fill new office space.
“The whole idea is to get a better area identification so that when you are sitting back in New Jersey and thinking about relocating a regional headquarters to the West Coast . . . you will think about the Irvine Business Complex,” said Richard Ortwein, Koll Co. division president.
