Orange County Hughes Plant to Be Started

Ground breaking for a $30-million facility for a Hughes Aircraft Co. subsidiary, Microelectronic Systems Division, will take place Wednesday at Rancho Santa Margarita Business Park in south Orange County.

An initial project in the master-planned Rancho Santa Margarita, the facility will contain 300,000 square feet in a two-story building sited on 35-acres at 29947 Avenida de las Banderas, according to Don E. Bowers, partner of Los Angeles-based Bowers Perez Associates, managing developer of the project. The structure will house about 950 employees, now working in seven buildings in the Irvine area.

The Rancho Santa Margarita Co. said more than 50 acres of the planned 400-acre business park have been purchased for development and the first seven buyers will build about 630,000 square feet of space and employ about 1,700 people by early 1988.