Offers for Race Track Site Being Considered; Development at Stake
Plans to sell the Los Alamitos race track and adjacent golf course for commercial development could potentially be lucrative to the property’s current owner, but real estate experts said Wednesday that development of the 297-acre site would be no cakewalk.
Hollywood Park Realty Enterprises, the race track’s owner, is considering four offers to purchase the entire property, as well as nearly 20 offers to buy portions of the site, Neil Papiano, an attorney for the Los Angeles-based real estate investment trust, said Wednesday.
Two of the proposals, he said, have come from developers who would demolish the money-losing race track and erect offices, retail sites, hotels or an industrial park. Papiano declined to say how much Hollywood Park would seek for the property, which it purchased in 1984 for $63 million.
The site, which includes a 110-acre golf course, has been the focus of considerable community controversy in recent months. Cypress officials last year first approved and then rescinded a $100-million development plan for the golf course property, which has been closed to play.
Petition Drive
The decision to rescind approval for the development plan was made by the City Council in November, after a group of local golfers collected 2,196 signatures--or about 10% of the city’s population--in a successful petition drive.
“Eventually it’s going to be developed,” said David Sigmond, a broker with Grubb & Ellis Commercial Brokerage in Newport Beach. “It’s a matter of meeting the needs that the City of Cypress sees, while meeting the economic needs that the developer sees.”
Sigmond estimated that the property could fetch about $77 million in its present state. “On an as-is, where-it-is basis, that’s probably what’s its worth,” he said.
Although Papiano kept the identities of potential buyers under wraps, commercial real estate brokers said it would take a fairly large and well-financed company to develop such a large property.
“There are a number of developers who have looked at that property,” said Jim Buckingham, a broker with Coldwell Banker Real Estate Group Inc.
Likely buyers, Buckingham said, could include the Koll Co. and the Trammell Crow Co., both of which have extensive commercial real estate interests in Orange County. “It’s going to take someone of that size to do it,” he said.
Want to Keep Track
Officials of the two development firms could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Papiano said that while the race track has been losing money since last year, when the California Lottery began operations, Hollywood Park would prefer to see horse racing continue at Los Alamitos, possibly under a lease-back arrangement.
“Certainly, it’s our intention to stay in the racing business,” Papiano said. But, he admitted, there is “always that possibility” that the track could be sold to a developer who would demolish it.
Even if the race track were to be sold, winning the right to develop the land, it would probably be a lengthy process, involving zone changes, environmental impact reports and amendments to local land-use plans, said Cypress associate planner Chuck Thistlethwaite.
Currently, the property is zoned for “public and semipublic” use, he said.
“It’s real tough,” Thistlethwaite said, adding that development of the golf course portion of the property was scotched last year after city officials encountered stiff opposition from golfers.
Still, Papiano says he is optimistic that whoever might buy the property will be able to build upon it. “There are constitutional guarantees that you can act reasonably with your own property,” he said.
