REAL ESTATE : 2 Big-City, High-Rise Condo Projects Are on the Drawing Board
Most county residents--so the theory goes--will not buy a condo that’s more than three stories off the ground. Anything higher just does not feel, well, suburban enough.
But there are plans afoot to build at least two big-city, high-rise condominiums in the county, although one of the builders has not made a final commitment to the idea.
At Mola Center--at the corner of Jamboree Road and Campus Drive in Irvine--what would be the tallest residential building in the county will go up sometime next year--15 stories, 164 units. The top two floors will contain just four two-story units of about 3,000 square feet each--the size of a large house.
No price has been set yet, but even the less spectacular units will be very expensive, said Timothy N. Roberts, director of operations for the developer, Irvine’s Mola Development Corp. The views include a marsh in one direction, Newport Beach’s Back Bay in another and the office towers of the Irvine Business Complex in another.
“It’s somewhat trailblazing, but all our research shows there’s a real responsive market out there,” Roberts said.
The condo tower will be part of an unusual mixed-use development that will include an office tower, an eight-screen movie theater, thousands of square feet of retail space and apartments. In other words, a nearly self-contained urban village on 40 acres.
“We felt it could work if it was tied in with the offices and stores and theaters,” Roberts said. The impetus for the condo tower, Roberts said, came directly from Frank Mola, chairman and owner of the development company.
Meanwhile, there are plans for a high-rise with even more spectacular views over at the Irvine Co.’s Newport Center, an office and shopping mall complex on a Newport Beach hill overlooking the ocean.
The company has permission to build nearly 250 units in a building that could go as high as 15 stories, said Roger Seitz, the company’s vice president of urban design and planning. Or the company may elect to build two shorter buildings, he said.
“It’s been discussed for a while, and it could happen very quickly,” Seitz said. “But whether the market would accept it is still a problem. We think it’d be dynamite, but we’re not sure yet the market would agree.”
This building too would benefit from the shopping, movie theaters and restaurants nearby, providing a more urban setting than many of the county’s neighborhoods.
All this is one more sign that the county is losing its suburban ambience and assuming a more urban cityscape. As land and housing prices rise, condominiums already account for 40% of the new-home sales in the county. That percentage will increase, experts said, as many county residents eventually abandon their dream of a house with a yard.
